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RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

WARREN H. MILLER 




WARREN H. MILLER 

Editor Field and Stream. 



RIFLES AND 
SHOTGUNS 

The Art of Rifle and Shotgun Shooting 

for Big Game and Feathered Game 

with Special Chapters on Military Rifle 

Shooting 



BY 

WARREN H. MILLER 

Editor, Field and Stream 

AUTHOR OF "THE BOYS' BOOK OF CANOEING AND SAILING," 

"THE BOYS' BOOK OF HUNTING AND FISHING," 

"CAMP CRAFT," ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED FROM 
PHOTOGRAPHS 



NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



V\<° 



COPYRIGHT, 191 7, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



APR 24 1917 

COPYRIGHT, I9II, 191 7, BY THE FIELD AND STREAM PUB. CO 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



©CU46056.8 



PREFACE 

Every American citizen should be a good shot, as 
our forefathers were before us. That ability has been 
our strength during the short life of the Republic, and 
the reputation of being a nation of riflemen will con- 
tinue to be our surest guarantee against foreign in- 
vasion, so long as each generation lives up to its duty. 

In this era of preparedness, I have not failed to 
put in a complete treatment of the military rifle, mili- 
tary shooting positions, and the curriculum of the 
National Rifle Association, the more needful since 
this information is not accessible to the general pub- 
lic, being for the most part contained in the Small 
Arms Manual, issued only to the Army and National 
Guard and not on general sale. 

"Rifles and Shotguns" is the gist of the author's 
own experience during many years of big game and 
feathered game shooting. Setting all theories and 
general average methods aside, what the sportsman 
needs is a system of rifle and shotgun shooting that 
will bring home the meat, and that will not crumple 
and fail in the tense excitement of the supreme mo- 
ment, that fleeting instant when your gunsights are 
trained on wild beast or bird making good his escape 
with every power at his command — and success or 
chagrin will depend upon the trueness with which the 
bullet is sped or the charge of shot placed. 



vi PREFACE 

And for the hunter it must be realized that military 
systems, designed to make target scorers out of the 
general average of humanity, will not fit one for the 
crucial moment of big game shooting, nor will trap- 
shooting ever make a wingshot who can knock down 
his bird with a swift snap in the thick brush. Long 
experience, of the kind that must not fail to get the 
meat or else go hungry, as an alternative, has taught 
me what to discard and what to concentrate on in 
making of one's self a successful big game or feath- 
ered game shot. The sights that will not fail you in 
the dense timber; the method of gun pointing that 
loses no instant before connecting shot charge and 
flying bird; details of gun fitting that count for accu- 
racy ; training that will prepare the novice so that he 
will not have to begin all over again when his profi- 
ciency is actually tested out on game; these are set 
forth in this work so that the beginner can assimilate 
them. 

Warren H. Miller. 
Interlaken, N. J., 191 7. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Four Centuries of Firearms 15 

II. Rifle Mechanics 32 

III. Rifle Sights 49 

IV. Aiming at Big Game 62 

V. Trigger Release 70 

VI. Rifle Targets 79 

VII. Two Rifles for the Poor Man .... 93 

VIII. The .22 Rifle 106 

IX. The U. S. Military Rifle . . . . . . 117 

X. Know Your Gun 137 

XI. The Man's Game of Trapshooting . . . 155 

XII. Clay Bird Practice Afield 174 

XIII. Shotgun Mechanics 19 2 

XIV. Snap Shooting 208 

XV. Cartridges and Tables 222 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Warren H. Miller, Editor Field and Stream . Frontispiece"' 

Fig. i. Early Escopettes and Petronels .... 18" 

Types of Percussion Cap Repeaters 18"" 

The Earliest Breech Loading Musquetoon ... 18 y 

Long Barreled Siege Guns of the 17TH Century . 22^ 

Fig. 2. Rampart Siege Guns, Grenade Guns and 

Multifire Weapons 28^ 

Double Fire Guns 28 ^ 

Action of the Winchester, Model '86 34 

Action of the Winchester, Model '94 34^ 

Action of the .35 Cal Remington Automatic . . . 38^ 

Action of the Stevens Single Shot Favorite ... 38 

Action of the Winchester, Model '95 38 v 

Remington .35 Calibre Autoloading . . . . . 42 

Marlin Repeating Rifle 42^ 

Savage Model '99 42 

The Springfield U. S. Military Rifle, Model of '03 46" 

The Sauer-Mauser 8mm 46^ 

The Mannlicher 9MM. Sporting Rifle 46 v ' 

Sights of the .22 Rifles and Army Battle Sight . . 52^ 

Ivory, Gold Bead and Globe Front Sights ... 52^ 

Antelope Targets for Cellar Range 52- 

Camp Fire Club Rising Bear Target 52 



IX 



x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



Folding Bar and Leaf Rear Sight 52" 

Folding Peep Sight $2 y 

The U. S. Government Cartridges ...... 58 

Showing the Effects of Canting the Rifle . . . 58^ 

Fox and Deer Cartridges 58^ 

Too Fine Sighting 58 

Cartridges Used in "Two Rifles for the Poor Man" ^8' 

Correct Target Sighting . 58 

Winchester Model '86 Repeating Rifle, Tublar 

Magazine 66^ 

Winchester Repeating Rifle '95, Box Magazine . 66 y 

A Party of Bear Hunters 74^ 

The Camp Fire Club Rising Bear. Range 100 Yards 84 

The Author's Pendulum Deer 84^ 

The Winchester Model '92 98^ 

The Springfield-Mauser, 7 . 65 mm 98^ 

The Springfield-Mauser Altered to a Sporting Rifle 98 ^ 

.22 Cal. Rifles 108^ 

"Cat Rifles" io8 y 

Top View and Vertical Section of the Action of the 

Army Springfield 122^ 

Standard Military Targets Used by the U. S. Army, 

National Guard and National Rifle Association 126' 

Plan for an Outdoor Rifle Range 126 / 

Taking Off Extractor 128 

Taking Out Bolt 128 

Taking Stripes Off Firing Pin Sleeve 128 

Unscrewing Sleeve 128 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi 

PAGE 

Lieut. Whelen in the Four Military Shooting Po- 
sitions 130^ 

Faults in Sighting and the Corresponding Hits on 

the Targets 134' 

wlndage, and canted barrel . 134' 

Correct Holding and Effect of Canted Barrel . . 134^ 

Brush Load in Full Choked at 30 Yards . . . . 150" 

Brush Load Full Choked at 40 Yards 150 

Medium Choked Right at 30 Yards 6" Off Center 150 

Full Choked Left at 40 Yards . . . . . . . 150 

Full Choked Left at 30 Yards in 24'' Circle . . . 150 

Mountain Sheep Target at 300 Yards 150 

Scene at the Grand American Handicap Trapshoot- 

ing Tournament 156 

The Trap Puller at Work 156 

Traps of the Asbury Park Gun Club . . . . 156" 

Three Clay Bird Traps Set Behind Board Screen . 170" 

Double Target Automatic Clay Bird Trap . . . 170^ 

Interior of Trap House 170 

A Fine Ithaca 12 Ga. Shotgun 184 

The L. C. Smith One-trigger Double 12 Ga. Shotgun 184 1 

Parker 10 and 20 Gauge Double Guns 188 

Lefever 12 Ga. Double Gun 188 

Remington Repeating Shotgun 196^ 

A High Grade Single Trap Gun 196 

Winchester Repeating Shotgun 196 

Action of the Lefever Shotguns 200 

Action of the Parker with Automatic Ejector . . 200 ' 



xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Action of the Fox Guns 200 

Action of the L. C. Smith Gun 204* 

Bolt Locks of the Ithaca Shotgun 204 

Ithaca Bolting System 204 - 

Ithaca Locks 204- 

Hard Snap Shooting 212 1 

The Snap Shooting School 212* 

Easy Shooting with Clear Sky 212- 



RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 



RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

CHAPTER I 

FOUR CENTURIES OF FIREARMS 

In 1907 it was my good fortune to be residing in 
France, and furthermore to be in close touch with the 
Musee d'Artillerie in the Hotel des Invalides in Paris. 
My good friend M. le Commandant, L. Hardie, then 
curator of the museum, gave me permission, as an 
American author and sportsman, to photograph and 
handle the firearms in that vast collection to my 
heart's content, and I was not slow to take advantage 
of the opportunity. Perhaps the most complete bridge 
in the gap between the antique bombard and the mod- 
ern automatic high-velocity rifle of to-day is that col- 
lection of firearms in the Invalides — 2,500 different 
pieces, arranged in five great halls. I have seen the 
collections at Dresden and Berlin, the Tower of Lon- 
don collection, and our own magnificent exhibit in the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, but it is safe to say that 
none of them approaches in completeness and extent 
the great collection in the Paris Musee d'Artillerie. 
The photographs herewith of the more interesting 
groups of hand firearms were taken by the author, 
leaving out the artillery section of the collection as 

15 



16 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

beyond the limits of this discussion. With the artillery 
may be classed the history of gunpowder, for for a 
hundred years the cannon or bombard was the medium 
through which gunpowder was slowly developed to an 
excellence where it could yield a velocity suitable for 
hand firearms using comparatively small missiles fired 
against armour plate. The arbalest and the long bow 
still held sway in the XlVth Century as hand shoot- 
ing arms, the bow, three inches wide by one and one- 
half inches thick at the centre, and seven feet long, 
being capable of penetrating all smaller pieces of 
armour plate, and the arbalest, with its great, steel 
waggon springs and geared winch to wind it up, driv- 
ing a steel bolt right through the strongest part of any 
armour, provided it hit square on, at close range. 
But gunpowder could give no such force or pene- 
tration, for, until you pass a certain velocity, it is im- 
possible to penetrate steel plate, no matter what the 
size of the ball. 

For a century after the first use of cannon, the 
powder was still so poor as to be useless in anything 
like hand firearms, but by the year 1430, shortly after 
Agincourt, the battlefields of Europe began to know 
here and there the early escopettes and petronels. 
There are very few of the former still extant. Forged 
in soft iron, most of them perished on the field of bat- 
tle or were forged over as old scrap iron. They fired 
but a very feeble shot, and were usually carried by 
mounted men-at-arms and fired by holding the iron 
tail against the armour under the left arm and touch- 
ing off with a fuse held in the right hand. Out of the 
vast collection of the Musee d'Ar tiller ie, there are 



FOUR CENTURIES OF FIREARMS 17 

only five escopettes, dating around 1420, some of 
which are shown in Fig. 1 . Note that the shank was 
forged in one piece with the tube, and the touchhole 
was on top, the side touch hole with priming pan not 
having been thought of until the second half of the 
XVth Century. The petronels, shown alongside the 
escopettes, are of the early years of the XVI th Cen- 
tury, when ancient tapestries of battles of the period 
show us whole platoons of foot soldiers firing petro- 
nels, a second man going in front of the musketeer, 
who laid his heavy piece on the varlet's shoulder. A 
cover for the priming pan was invented, and the bore 
of the piece enlarged until it could fire a missile that 
would knock a knight out of his saddle, even if it 
didn't penetrate his cuirasse. Frightful bulges these 
missiles made, as specimen armour shows, enough to 
kill the man inside from the shock alone. The petro- 
nel men thus opened the eyes of field commanders to 
the possibilities of musket fire, and supplied the in- 
centive to work out a match mechanism to set off the 
priming. 

With the beginning of the XVIth Century the 
development of firearms began to move fast all over 
Europe. Charles V of Spain became Emperor of 
Germany and therefore of the Holy Roman Empire, 
so that nearly all civilisation was under one prince, 
and in Spain was invented the first matchlock. Just 
a serpent's head holding the end of a rope or fuse 
which snapped down into the priming when the trig- 
ger was pulled, but it made a really formidable 
weapon of the petronel, because it could be fired in- 
stantaneously. Besides which, the obvious scheme of 



18 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

putting a movable cover on the priming pan was 
thought out in all its details, and all the vast armies 
of Spain and France began to arm their foot-soldiers 
with this new weapon, called the musquetoon or ar- 
quebus, depending on the calibre. Almost simulta- 
neously, in 15 15, the wheel-lock was invented in 
Nuremberg and the wheel-lock arquebus spread 
throughout Germany and the Empire. If you take a 
stone of yellow pyrites and rub it violently across a 
file a shower of sparks will be raised. As this Nu- 
remberg genius couldn't rub with the pyrites-stone in 
any known form of hammer, he made the file part in 
the shape of a wheel, which spun around under the 
pyrites when the hammer came down. The wheel has 
a chain and spring acting on its post and is wound up 
with a crank, carried along with the weapon as in 
arbalest days, and is locked by the trigger. The ham- 
mer also has a strong spring and the trigger releases 
both wheel and hammer. The priming powder lies 
in a pan whose bottom is the serrated rim of the wheel 
and the sparks ignite it. 

This wheel-lock made a very complete mechanical 
fire-arm of the arquebus, and it soon became popular 
all over Europe. The armourers and locksmiths of 
that day were used to fine work and turned out ex- 
ceedingly craftmanlike, handsome guns, light, and 
easy to aim and fire. They were used for both hunt- 
ing and in warfare, and such guns as the arquebusses 
of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu are examples 
of the combined jeweller's art and gunsmith's craft 
seldom equalled in our day. 

The name arquebus comes from the German 




FIG. 1. EARLY ESCOPETTES AND 
PETBONELS 



TYPES OF PEECtTSSION-CAP 
BEPEATEBS 




THE EABLIEST BREECH-LOADING MUSQUETOON 



FOUR CENTURIES OF FIREARMS 19 

hacken-buchsc or "crackling-tube." This gun had 
two serious drawbacks for use in war, though well 
adapted for the chase. In the first place it was of 
rather small bore, firing a ball weighing only one-third 
ounce or forty-eight to the pound, and so had very 
little penetrative force, owing to the poor quality of 
the powder. The arbalest, with its steel waggon- 
springs and heavy steel bolt, could shoot right through 
a coat of plate at short range while the arquebus ball 
simply caromed off and hit some one else. The sec- 
ond drawback was that pyrites is prone to misfire and 
give no sparks at all, particularly when some tall an- 
tagonist is about to spit you with his partisan. To 
avoid this unfortunate eventuality they often supplied 
the arquebus with tzi'o hammers, sometimes both of 
pyrites, often with one match and one wheel-lock. In 
spite of these difficulties the arquebus was very exten- 
sively used. Large divisions of the Spanish armies 
consisted entirely of arquebussiers and they also 
played a very prominent part in Germany in the 
Thirty Years' War. 

But in France the wheel-lock never came into any 
great favour. The matchlock was surer to go off and 
easier to manufacture. Besides which the French 
were determined to fire something at a knight in 
armour which would at least attract his attention — 
which the arquebus certainly did not — so the musque- 
toon gradually became the standard weapon of the 
French armies, and the musketeers of the type of 
D'Artagnan formed the back-bone of the armies of 
Conde, Turenne and Prince Eugene of Savoy. This 
gun was of an inch bore and larger, firing a ball 



20 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

weighing an ounce and a quarter — which pellet, even 
with the villainous powder of the times, would crash 
through any cuirasse ever built. The gun itself 
weighed twenty or thirty pounds, had trunnions for 
its fork-rest, and was fired by a matchlock. A var- 
let was needed to help carry it about, just as with the 
petronel, whence the need for a groom, such as 
DArtagnan's Planchet or Athos' Grimaud, often 
very much attached to the musketeer he served. Of 
course the matchlock was quite often used on the ar- 
quebus and the wheel-lock on the musquetoons. The 
real distinction lies in the weight and calibre of the 
weapon. 

The warfare of the time of Louis XIV was chiefly 
noted for the siege character of the operations. 
Marlborough and his victories of Oudenarde, Malpla- 
quet, etc., were but the results of prolonged siege and 
fort warfare, which had its due influence on firearms 
in the shape of long-range, accurate rampart weapons 
which could pick out a horseman or a knot of gen- 
erals and do damage among them even at a very con- 
siderable range. To get this range and accuracy with 
the powder still in a quite primitive condition, you 
had but one recourse, lengthen the tube of the barrel. 
Some of these extraordinary siege weapons were 
fourteen feet long and over. The photograph, show- 
ing a very complete set of examples of long-range 
siege guns, will give you some idea of how they 
looked. Those shown with shoes on were for the 
obvious purpose of resting the fore end on the ram- 
parts instead of on some husky villain's back. 

Of these siege guns the first in importance were 



FOUR CENTURIES OF FIREARMS 21 

the long rampart guns, with swivel shoes on, and of 
extraordinary lengths, with nine to fourteen feet of 
barrel. This barrel was not only to shoot long dis- 
tances with the heavy ball and slow-burning powder, 
but also to be able to hit something by reason of the 
better accuracy it gave. The other requirement of 
siege operations was to be able to fire fast and furious 
when storming parties scaled the ramparts. The de- 
vices thought out for rapid fire by the ancient gun- 
cranks have been endless, and of an ingenuity worthy 
of a Connecticut Yankee. Fig. 2 shows, besides some 
shoed rampart guns, a number of curiosities for quick 
firing, such as the German gun with three barrels on 
one stock; the organ-pipe gun, with six barrels 
touched off in turn with a punk; and the two guns 
with eight and ten barrels respectively, set off by a 
single hammer on each side in sets of four or five. 
They also had revolving matchlock guns in great pro- 
fusion, both with the chambers revolving and with 
sets of barrels turning about a central pivot. There 
is also a gun with chambers in a traversing breech- 
block, which is the Mediaeval prototype of our most 
modern cartridge-clip. 

Undoubtedly the first repeating arquebus was in- 
vented by reason of the classic mistake of getting two 
loads in the same barrel, one on top of the other. 
This did not worry our forefathers any. They just 
took the offending arquebus to the gunsmith who 
"fixed" it by simply boring another touch-hole and 
adding a second wheel-lock. The gun now became 
a repeater, since you fired off charge No. 2 with one 
hammer and charge No. 1 with the other. The king 



22 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

arquebus of all the resulting tribe is a matchlock with 
eight touch-holes along the same barrel. You 
rammed down the eight charges one on top of the 
other, with nicks on the ramrod to see that they were 
spaced right, and an ingenious track action brought 
down the match serpent into each touchpan in turn, 
every time you pulled the trigger. The writer has 
handled and aimed this invention, and can vouch for 
the perpetrator having been a large, powerful man, 
for the arquebus weighs at least twenty-five pounds 
and takes every ounce of a modern man's strength to 
even aim it. 

The inventor evidently escaped with his life with- 
out firing off No. i prematurely instead of No. 8, but 
probably became discouraged on seeing a line of pow- 
der spouts out of all his touch-holes when No. I 
finally went off, and the bullet rolled out of the barrel 
at a greatly reduced velocity. 

Almost every scheme of modern times has been 
tried by these early gunsmiths. The first breech- 
loader is a musquetoon nine feet long, of the latter 
half of the XVIth Century, weighing nearly sixty 
pounds. It has the bolt action, which was not then 
appreciated, nor used extensively until the Prussian 
needle-gun of nearly three centuries later. Its bolt 
weighed six pounds, but it locked into the gap of 
the breech on turning ever on its side just as with 
modern arms. The charge was touched off with a 
matchlock. 

The introduction of percussion caps about 1815 
brought in its train numberless queer inventions, par- 
ticularly among the investigative Germans. The 




LONG BARRELED SIEGE GUNS OF THE 17TH CENTURY 



FOUR CENTURIES OF FIREARMS 23 

swinging breech-block being already an old story, 
why not make the gun mechanically self-loading? 
In the XlXth Century hall are a number of these 
absurdities, upon which so much machinery is assem- 
bled that it is difficult to find the gun. One lever fills 
the breech with powder from a brass magazine, an- 
other puts in the ball and squeezes it home, another 
puts on a percussion cap and cocks the piece. All the 
shooter has to do is to go and get some one else to 
fire it for him, and then collect the pieces of his friend 
for the funeral ! 

Another invention, since duplicated in our day, is 
a primitive "silencer." An arquebus of the date of 
1615 has labyrinthine vents cut all over the barrel for 
a foot back from the muzzle. 

The stocks of all the early arquebusses are ex- 
tremely short, square and clumsy, so that to aim one 
nowadays you have to hold the flash-pan unpleas- 
antly near your eyes. The reason for this was that 
all the foot-soldiers of those times wore a steel cui- 
rass and steel sleeves on the arms, and the stock was 
cut to rest nicely against the breastplate or projec- 
tion from the sleeve, which was several inches from 
the man's real body. 

But we are getting ahead of our logical chronique. 
By far the greatest invention in firearms was the 
product of a famous hotbed of armourers and gun- 
smiths that centred in and about Madrid, Spain. This 
was the flint lock, called originally the Miquelet lock, 
after its inventor. 

Consider what he had to do to make a step for- 
ward from the serpentine and the wheel lock. He 



24 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

had to somehow arrange to strike a flint against a 
steel so as to direct the resulting spark into a pan of 
priming powder, and yet keep said pan closed and 
dry against the elements up to the instant of firing. 
As the wheel lock already had its components assem- 
bled outside the lock plate, he followed suit, put a 
flint in the mouth of the hammer instead of a match 
or bit of pyrites, arranged his main spring as in the 
earlier wheel locks outside on the lock plate, and then 
he made a steel cover for his priming pan which 
would be struck by the hammer and opened at the 
same time the flint scraped past the edge of the steel. 
This involved a right-angle cover, with a big ear 
sticking up, which is the first thing the hammer 
strikes. The force of it throws open the pan and the 
flint scrapes the sharp edge of the cover, thus show- 
ering sparks into the pan. This discovery dates 
about 1630, and it at once paved the way for stand- 
ardisation of arms, and made possible regular bodies 
of infantry all armed alike and firing at command in 
platoons. In Spain the Miquelet lock kept its original 
form for many years, and in the Barbary States the 
Arabs still use it to this day, but the French turned 
the lock around so as to sink the spring and trigger 
mechanism into the wood of the stock, which is the 
form it has remained even to this day in all civilised 
countries. Practically the only change in the lock, 
outside of the percussion end of it, has been in the 
modern Anson and Deely lock, located in slots under 
the barrel, as described in our chapter on Shotgun 
Mechanics. 

We have, then, roughly, a hundred years for the 



FOUR CENTURIES OF FIREARMS 25 

period of glory of the matchlock and wheel lock, ter- 
minating early in the XVIIth Century, when the 
flint lock came to stay. It misfired a great deal at 
first, and Vauban, the great French military author- 
ity, armed the infantry of France for some time with 
two-hammer locks, such as are shown in our illustra- 
tions, in which a serpentine (or sometimes a wheel- 
lock) and a flint lock both touched off the powder, 
and if the first misfired you had merely to touch the 
second trigger. How this idea ever got by the 
logical-minded French is beyond me. Since the ser- 
pentine was sure to go off, why bother with the flint 
lock at all? And the answer is probably — rain. La 
pluie is always to be reckoned with in France, putting 
the serpentine out of the running entirely, and if the 
enemy was disposed to fight in the rain there would 
be nothing to do but give him your best with an addi- 
tional flintlock. Eventually, the flintlock was per- 
fected by testing flints and tempering the steel, so that 
it seldom misfired, and it reigned supreme and 
fought all Europe's wars for two centuries; saw the 
rise and decline of Louis XIV.; the decline of Hol- 
land; the rise of England as a colonial empire builder; 
the rise and fall of Napoleon; and the birth of lib- 
erty in the United States of America. Then, about 
1815, the first glimmerings of a fulminate of mercury 
cap, that would explode with the blow of a hammer, 
began to shine forth in crude inventions of the percus- 
sion cap, which finally reached its zenith about 1840 
with the well-known (and well-belaboured) G. D. 
caps of our grandfathers. 

The percussion cap had a short life, not over 



26 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

thirty years, before it was put into the cartridge and 
the reign of the breech loader began, in which the 
hammer either came down direct on the head of the 
primer or else struck a firing pin which dented the 
primer and set off the little particle of fulminate of 
mercury between the primer head and the primer 
anvil. 

Another important invention in firearms, rifling 
the bore, we have had with us since the last half of 
the XVIth Century — 1585 being the earliest date on 
a rifled arquebus that I can find. The original idea 
of the rifle grooves was simply to provide a way to 
blow out the crude products of combustion of the 
powder, thus making the gun self -cleaning. For a 
hundred years before 1585 the armourers of Nurem- 
burg had tested out and appreciated the effects of 
spinning an arbalest dart about its axis by means of 
helical vanes. The museums of the world are full of 
such bolts, fitted with curved copper, wood and 
feather vanes. Any object to which a rotary motion 
has been imparted sufficient to set up gyratory action 
is very difficult to deflect from its position. It will 
not keyhole, nor dumdum, nor, if it strikes a minor 
obstruction, will it be set wildly off its course and go 
all to pieces, but it will rather pursue the even tenor 
of its way, piercing the obstruction if it has force 
enough and continuing on undeflected. All of this 
had been well established by tests in Nuremburg with 
arbalest bolts, so it was but a step to utilise the clean- 
ing out grooves to twist the bullet by cutting them 
with a rotary motion to the cutting tool as it was 
drawn through the barrel. Once a nice twist was 



FOUR CENTURIES OF FIREARMS 27 

established, the cutter would make this deeper and 
deeper, each time drawn through the barrel, and so 
we find many of these earlier riflings a tournelles, 
that is, with little circular grooves cut in the points of 
each rifle groove so that the powder residue could be 
blown out of these channels while the bullet was being 
rifled at the same time. Needless to say, with higher 
gas-making capacity in the powder charge, these tour- 
nelles were dispensed with as wasting too much gas 
pressure. 

Of course, simultaneously with rifling, came the 
elongated bullet, with cone head or even with the 
parabolic head and fine entrance of modern bullets. 
In fact, as gunsmiths, there was little that we can do 
to-day that those early armourers could not duplicate. 
Rifled muskets, or carabines as they were universally 
named, were used as military arms almost simulta- 
neously with the discovery of rifling, the earliest 
regiments being those of Wilhelm, Landgrave of 
Hesse, in 163 1, and of Elector Maximilian of Bavaria 
in 1641 ; while Louis XIV had a corps of riflemen as 
his personal bodyguard. In 1679 he decreed that in 
each company of light cavalrymen there should be 
two riflemen, and later united all these into a sepa- 
rate regiment of carabiniers. During the Seven 
Years' War, Frederick the Great had a battalion of 
hunters armed with rifles, and in Sweden the sub- 
lieutenants of dragoons carried the same weapon. In 
France the first regulation rifle was adopted in 1793, 
period of the Directory, and was hence called the 
Carabine de Versailles. 

Cartridges first came into use about the time of 



28 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

Louis XIII, with the Musketeers, and were at first 
carried in a bandolier, later in a protected cartridge 
box; they all took the form of a paper roll, bit off 
with the teeth at the powder end. 

It is a fascinating study to browse among the 
early firearms of the Musee d'Artillerie and piece 
out by their markings and decorations the military 
history of Europe. Here, for example, is a short 
Italian musquetoon, with its wheel lock, bearing 
the inscription, Viva chi difende di casa Famesa. 
Mafeo Badile fecit. Now we learn that Mafeo Badile 
was a celebrated armourer who flourished about 1650 
when the feuds between the Farnese, the Medici, the 
Barberini and the Borgia rent Italy, and so this gun 
doubtless served the Farnese clan in the Papal wars 
of that period. Here is a French wheel-lock arque- 
bus, richly decorated with engraving and sculptured 
ivory. A picture engraved on it presents a costume 
of the time of Henry IV of France. This dates it 
about 1590 and suggests the battles of Arques and 
Ivry against the Catholic League, in which this 
weapon probably took part. Also recalls Sully and 
the Edict of Nantes. The musquetoon next to it ac- 
tually belonged to Henry IV, and has his portrait in 
bas-relief in ivory on the mahogany stock. It is ex- 
ceeding richly inlaid with gold and silver and is 
rifled with four grooves, thus being also one of the 
earliest known rifles. The horn of the stock termi- 
nates in a finely carved demi-globe of the world, with 
a map carved on it of all that was known of the world 
at that time. 

Another interesting weapon is a German arquebus 




RAMPART SIEGE GUNS 

Note on left 
3 -barrel gun. 



GRENADE GUNS AND MULTIFIRE WEAPONS 

uns with 8 and 6 barrels, in center 6-barrel gun and on right 
Grenade guns have long curved stocks. 




DOUBLE-FIRE GUNS 

Owing to the uncertainty of the pyrites stone of the wheel lock, two locks 
were often provided. Note 8-touchhole matchlock repeater at 
bottom of picture. 



FOUR CENTURIES OF FIREARMS 29 

of about 1660, rifled in pentagon a tournelles. It is a 
wheel lock with the hammer burying the pyrites com- 
pletely in the pan and provided with a little chimney 
four inches long to carry off the smoke of the priming 
and direct it away from the shooter's eyes. The in- 
scription Joann Mendelos in Oprago shows the maker 
to have been a Spaniard in Prague, but the escutcheon 
of Hans Christoph and the inscription Stifter Hans 
Christoph de Prague shows it to have been the prop- 
erty of that famous cannonier, and therefore to have 
taken part in the siege of Prague by the collected 
might of Sweden, which closed the Thirty Years' 
War. A little farther on in the collection one stum- 
bles upon another early rifle, of the date of 1585, a 
German wheel-lock arquebus. It bears upon the long 
trigger-guard an engraved figure of a warrior carry- 
ing a shield with the arms of the Empire on the right 
and the fleur-de-lis of France on the left. What al- 
liance between Germany and France of the date of 
Henry IV does this suggest? 1585 suggests Cath- 
erine de Medici and her three weak sons who held the 
throne of France under her direction. As Henry IV 
was the first of the House of Bourbon and did not 
come to the throne until 1589, when he was then an 
ardent Protestant, detesting the religious convulsions 
brought on by the regency of Catherine, this rifle 
must have been borne by a soldier under Guise who 
commanded the Catholic armies. As France was 
very restive under the continued fire and slaughter of 
the religious wars and broke into open rebellion, driv- 
ing Henry III from Paris about 1585, this weapon 
was evidently carried by one of the armed mercena- 



30 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

ries of Rudolph II, who succeeded Charles V as 
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and was an ally 
of Catherine in all her wars and intrigues up to her 
most fortunate death in 1588. 

Among the musquetoons there is a matchlock, of 
the end of the XVIth Century, bearing the inscription 
Pour la Ville de Paris. Nicolas Colas. He belonged 
to the Guards of the City of Paris, organised at the 
same time as the events of the arquebus just de- 
scribed, and this very musket took part in the rebel- 
lion of Paris which drove out Henry III, ended the 
reign of the House of Valois — and may have been 
fired at that mercenary who bore the Franco-German 
arquebus, for all that we know ! 

Another, belonging to the same page of history, 
is a beautiful matchlock musquetoon, heavily en- 
graved with inlaid filigree work in copper, and in- 
crustations of pearls and mother-of-pearl. It carries 
on the muzzle an engraved head of a Turk, with a 
bell-mouth muzzle and a groove for the sight. It 
bears the inscription, Pour maintenir la foi, suis belle 
et fidelle, et aux ennemis du rois, suis rebelle et 
cruelle. (For maintaining The Faith I am faithful 
and serviceable; against the enemies of the king I am 
harsh and cruel.) Needless to say on which side 
this gun fought ! 

One can spend weeks in going over the workman- 
ship and inscriptions of these weapons of all centu- 
ries, each so distinctive of its time and maker; and 
when all is done the whole scene of the politics and 
nation-building of the countries of Europe stands out 
like a vast picture painted in indelible records left by 



FOUR CENTURIES OF FIREARMS 31 

the very armourers, gunsmiths and soldiers who made 
the history, fought out their religious convictions and 
political ideals, and left the Continent a family of 
nations each as distinct types of the human ideal as 
diversity of thought and life could make them. 



CHAPTER II 

RIFLE MECHANICS 

That wonderful mechanism, the modern big- 
game rifle, is such a triumph of the gunmaker's art 
and the woodsman's experience that we, who use them 
thoughtlessly, would do well to contemplate, just for 
once, all the labour, brains and experience that go 
into the makeup of such a first-class weapon. The 
ideal must meet the following requirements: It must 
be true to itself and of good steel, so that its bullet 
will always do the same flight in the same way, and 
this regardless of a reasonable amount of negligence 
in cleaning; it must be safe and fool-proofedly so, so 
that the enormous recoil of the high-power cartridge 
will be blocked at the breech by solid metal, bearing 
against the solid frame of the weapon, and this block- 
ing must take place before it is possible to fire the 
rifle, so that no prematures can occur in moments of 
intense excitement. The ideal rifle must handle cart- 
ridge after cartridge, feeding them into the chamber 
and discarding the empty shell without possibility of 
jamming in the excitement of the chase, smoothly and 
without too much effort on the shooter's part; its 
sights must be optically adapted to pick up faint and 
indistinct marks and define them clearly in all kinds 
of lights; the hang of the weapon for quick sighting 

32 



RIFLE MECHANICS 33 

must be right and not change materially on emptying 
the magazine ; the contour of it must be graceful and 
handsome, totally enclosed by the action, with no awk- 
ward recesses to catch and hold dirt and sand; no 
small and intricate sighting mechanisms or other eas- 
ily broken parts must be exposed to the vicissitudes 
of mountain and trail work; the rifle must be easily 
cleaned and dismounted, and, finally, more than one 
strength of cartridge in the same weapon is exceed- 
ingly desirable. 

Quite a formidable list of requirements; but note 
how well they all are met by American rifle-makers 
in half a dozen true and tried models that are in daily 
use by millions of American riflemen ! Of course, the 
scope of this chapter is too limited to describe the 
many forms of rifles that have found favour with the 
American public, but a dissection of how the ideal 
has been met by several well-known types is well 
within our space. We have room for a look at two 
of the best single-shots, four justly popular lever- 
action repeater models, one good automatic and the 
best of our American bolt-action sporters. And, as 
every sportsman should know something of what goes 
on inside the receiver frame of his rifle when he oper- 
ates its reloading mechanism, we shall confine our- 
selves more especially to the mechanics of the weapon, 
the "action," so-called, of the rifle. 

. With the single-shot rifles the gunmaker's prob- 
lem has been comparatively easy, and the embodiment 
of the best practice may be found in the popular 
Stevens and Winchester single shots, in which the 
breech block slides up and down in grooves cut in the 



34 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

receiver frame, actuated by an under lever, which is 
also the trigger guard, and, further, operates a sim- 
ple extractor in a recess in the receiver frame. No 
possible chance for the cartridge to blow back here, 
nor can it be fired prematurely, because the firing pin 
is in the breech block and is not presented to the ham- 
mer until the block is securely centred behind the car- 
tridge. The barrel is secured solidly in the frame, 
thus insuring trueness to itself of the bullet's flight in 
respect to the sights no matter where mounted, which 
cannot be had where the barrel moves on a hinge in 
opening the gun, as in shotguns. The extractor 
merely starts the cartridge out of the chamber some 
one-eighth inch, after which the fingers can grip the 
shell, and with factory-made ammunition this is no 
great hardship, though hand-loaded work may some- 
times be swelled so that the shell sticks in the barrel. 
In both of these rifles the breech parts are made big 
enough to fill up the general contour of the weapon, 
leaving a smooth exterior, with no holes or pockets to 
catch grit and dirt; the hammer is the only projecting 
object, and safety is assured by making this of the 
rebounding-lock type, with the trigger sear in the 
notch at all times, so that a blow from behind the 
hammer cannot force it on the pin and accidentally 
discharge it. Both rifles are "old reliables," beloved 
of all the riflemen of America, and few sportsmen's 
households are without at least one specimen of them, 
usually the .22, though they are made for nearly all 
the large calibres. 

When we come to the repeating arms the gun- 
maker's problems are much multiplied. Not only 




ACTION OF THE 
WINCHESTER 
MODEL '86 

.50-110-300, 

.45-90-300, 

.33 Winchester 

cartridges. 




RIFLE MECHANICS 35 

must you have a safe breech, but you much provide a 
mechanism that will pick a cartridge out of a maga- 
zine, insert it in the rifle barrel chamber, cock the 
hammer, throw out the empty cartridge and put in a 
new one, all in one motion of bolt or lever. And 
those last three words bring us to the most joyous part 
of the wordy controversy that has raged for years in 
the sporting press ; i. e., the great bolt vs. lever conten- 
tion. They are really all bolt-action rifles, every one 
of them, only in some you operate the bolt by hand, 
grabbing a knob for the purpose, and in others a 
trigger guard lever operates the bolt for you! 

Let us, then, look over the mechanics of a few of 
the old reliables so that we shall have more than a 
bowing acquaintance with the outside of the gun. 
Beginning with the popular Winchester Model '86, 
never more in general use than right now, when its 
.33 moose cartridge and the dependable .45-90 keep it 
still a big-game hunter's favourite, we have here a rep- 
resentative tubular magazine rifle; in fact, the best 
development of the tubular type, for with larger and 
longer cartridges there is not length enough for 
enough of them and we are forced to go to the box- 
magazine type. 

The action of such a rifle is simplicity itself. You 
have really four main parts: the main bolt, finger 
lever, cartridge carrier and locking bolts. Throwing 
down the finger lever slides back the main bolt, which 
pulls the empty shell along with it, and, riding down 
the hammer, cocks the rifle. At the same time the 
spring in the tubular magazine has shot a cartridge 
into the carrier and the latter lifts it, with the last of 



36 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

the downward motion of the lever, up in front of the 
bolt and in position to slide into the chamber. Right 
here is a practical point where many riflemen fall 
down in the woods ; they get excited and fail to drive 
home that last downward motion of the lever, starting 
to reclose it too quick in their hurry, with the result 
that, as the cartridge has not been lifted up enough, it 
cannot get into the chamber and a temporary jam re- 
sults. Besides practising to shoot your rifle accu- 
rately, you ought to give a good deal of time to 
running magazines full of cartridges through the 
action at full speed. Also put in lots of time firing 
full speed at a target, feeding through the action as 
with actual big game. I know that it doesn't make as 
nice scores as you really can make, firing the weapon 
single-shot, but are fine scores really what we are 
after ? Continuing the action of the Model '86 lever ; 
as the hand brings it up again, the bolt forces the new 
shell home and the lever raises the locking bolts into 
position. These are those small, bright-looking metal 
squares that you see coming up from below when the 
action closes, and they are the one thing needed to 
bring the contour all flush, with no holes or dents and 
hardly a crack for snow, twigs, needles and sand to 
get in by. Your rifle is now cocked and ready to 
shoot, and the whole action of reloading was done 
with the quickness of a hand-flash. You may want 
to plant that shot right off, or you may have a con- 
siderable stalk to make, in which the care of your 
rifle will be subordinated to the all-important practical 
consideration of keeping flat to the ground and mak- 
ing no noise ; in any event, there is little about the rifle 



RIFLE MECHANICS 37 

that will catch and hold twigs and briers, and no- 
where that dirt and pebbles can get in and clog. 

This model will take high-power cartridges with 
the utmost safety, as the locking scheme — two bolts 
sliding in grooves, half recessed in the frame and half 
in the bolt — is about the last thing that can fail in the 
action. The Model '92 is almost a duplicate of it; be- 
ing designed for short, stubby cartridges, its carrier 
swings on a pivot operated by the toe of the lever in- 
stead of being translated straight up and down, as 
with the larger cartridges of the '86. In both rifles 
the way to start taking down to give them an annual 
cleaning is by taking off the butt. Important pins 
cannot be got at to drive out unless you do this, for 
other parts must first come out to let you get at them. 
One hesitates to unscrew the mainspring and take out 
the hammer in order to gtt at the rest of the mechan- 
ism, but it must be done about once a year, as all the 
small parts on a long hunting trip get coated with rust 
and grease and ought to be taken out, soaked in kero- 
sene, cleaned and replaced. I have done it in camp 
with no other tools than my hunting-knife, axe blade 
and a small wire nail. The camp axe, if of good steel, 
makes a good screwdriver, using the turn of the upper 
corner of the poll. With the rifle stock off, all the 
rest of the dissection is plain sailing. 

The necessity to handle long cartridges in the tu- 
bular magazine led the Winchesters to develop the 
Model '94, and, in box-magazine type, the later Model 
'95, one of the most popular of big-game rifles. The 
need was for a longer swing to the lever, and this 
could not be had without dropping the centre to some 



38 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

point below the frame to swing on. More room was 
wanted, also, in Model '94 frame to handle those long 
shells (the .32 Special, .38-55, .30-30 and .32-40), so 
the locking bolt was moved back behind the bolt, 
where it could be poked up from below, between the 
end of the bolt and the solid back wall of the receiver 
frame. Mechanically, this type of backstop and the 
one in grooves is stronger and safer than some forms 
of side lugs such as are found on military rifles, for 
the latter must be forged to shape, introducing hidden 
weaknesses, and are subject to crystallisation from 
the pounding of the recoil, as are all outstanding bits 
of metal on all machinery. But a plain bit of mild 
steel, like these Winchester locking bolts or the Sav- 
age main bolt, backed by the receiver frame, while 
they may be squashed like cheese with excessive 
pounding, will never become brittle or crystallise and 
snap off. 

The Model '94 action is a delight to the mechanical 
engineer for its simplicity. Throwing down the lever 
at the same time drops down a piece of the bottom of 
the receiver frame, thus lowering the central pivot, so 
that you get a long swing to the lever head, which 
slides back the bolt. This bottom piece also carries 
down with it the locking bolt, which, by the way, will 
be the last thing to come back — just when it is wanted 
to close and make safe the action. Further up on the 
lever is pivoted the long carrier onto which each car- 
tridge is shot from the magazine by the tubular spring. 
As this carrier does not need to come into play until 
the lever head is well through its work of sliding back 
the bolt, its position far up on the lever insures this — 




ACTION OF THE .35 CAL 
REMINGTON AUTOMATIC 




ACTION OF THE STEVENS SINGLE SHOT FAVORITE 




ACTION OF THE 
WINCHESTER 
MODEL '95 

.30 army, 
.30 Gov't '06. 
.35 Winchester, 
.405 Winchester. 



RIFLE MECHANICS 39 

altogether the Model '94 action is quite a triumph in 
instantaneous centrics. 

But still larger and heavier cartridges, not only 
too long end to end to go well in a tubular magazine, 
but so heavy as to seriously affect the balance of the 
rifle, led to the adoption of the box magazine for the 
* lever gun in the Model '95. Now you will have a few 
more problems to contend with: The box magazine 
prevents you dropping down a piece out of the frame 
to get a low pivot for a long lever motion — all right — 
we drop a piece out of the trigger part of the frame, 
taking the trigger with it, and all is well, for we have 
now a long lever finger, with a shifting centre, so that, 
as the bolt slides back the centre below almost paral- 
lels it, making a very smooth action, needful, indeed, 
with such big cartridges! The box magazine intro- 
duces a separate problem of its own, for the lever head 
must straddle it, and so we find the lever in two broad, 
flat strips of steel sliding over the box, a part that 
must be kept oiled, and from which water must be kept 
away in cold weather or it will freeze fast and all your 
strength cannot move it. The Winchester people 
have provided against this, however, in their usual 
tight, smooth closing of the whole action, and, as a 
film of oil on the lever plates will last for a long time 
without renewing and of itself keeps out water, I have 
had few complaints to register from f reeze-ups, espe- 
cially as we clean snow water out of our rifles every 
night in camp on the hunting trips. 

The box magazine did away with the carrier; all 
that is needed with it is a spring or spring-operated 
pusher to raise the cartridges up into place. The ex- 



40 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

tractor tosses the empty shell out of the action as soon 
as the lower part of the head strikes the trip plate on 
the carrier. A jam here is only possible through not 
throwing the lever down far enough to trip the car- 
tridge — easily rectified, even in a swearing hurry, by 
simply completing the motion, when the cartridge is 
released and a new one shot up under the extractor 
circle. To dismount you begin at the magazine, in- 
stead of the butt, as in the other models. Taking 
off the fore end exposes the screw and spring con- 
trolling the magazine pusher. Two more screws re- 
lease the magazine box. Turning out the mainspring 
screw releases the hammer, and its removal permits 
getting at the lever pins, which can be driven out with 
a wire nail. 

The safety locking device on this model deserved 
especial consideration, owing to the powerful car- 
tridges handled. Following the lead of the Model '94, 
and for much the same reasons, the safety is a bolt 
pushed up from below, in between the rear end of the 
bolt and the rear wall of the frame. If you will look 
at the rear end of your '95 you will note it dropping 
down immediately you start the lever, and will see 
how much of a wall of solid steel (more than equal 
twice the cartridge base) it interposes between the 
bolt and the frame. In order to let the hammer get 
at the firing pin a notch is cut in the centre of the 
locking bolt, which takes the lower half of the pin, the 
upper half being its projection from out the main bolt. 
A great old rifle is the '95 ; in its three powerful car- 
tridges, the 405, .35 and .30 Government '06, it is a 
great favourite for big game, a nicely balanced weapon 



RIFLE MECHANICS 41 

that stays so, clean and smooth outside, easy to han- 
dle and climb with, quick to fire, and, with a tang 
peep, a folding leaf with white diamond in middle slot 
and a plain knife front sight with 45-degree flat filed 
on it, it makes a nice hunter's weapon. For auxilia- 
ries you have .41 Colt, the .380 Colt in steel Marble- 
Brayton cartridge, and the .32 S. & W., for the three 
main calibres of .405, .35 and .30 Government '06. 

Closely allied to the above actions are the Marlins, 
the principal difference being that the top of the re- 
ceiver is closed in, the rifle throwing its shell out the 
side ; the lever is pivoted from a lug below the frame 
to give a longer slide to the bolt than with pivoting 
through the frame ; and the lacking lug is pushed up 
from below inside the action, taking its bearings on 
grooves cut in the frame. The action is simple and of 
a few strong parts. It is somewhat hard to get at 
the cartridges from outside the frame in case of a 
jam, but compensations are found in the complete pro- 
tection to the interior parts by the solid receiver top. 
These rifles are adapted to such cartridges as the 
.32-40, .38-55, .30-30 and .32 Special, besides the 
smaller and stubbier designs. 

Differing radically from the above are the re- 
peating actions exemplified by the Savage rifles, whose 
.303, .22 hp. and .250-3000 cartridges are in such uni- 
versal popular favour. The scheme of the Savage ac- 
tion is simple and strong. The bolt is a solid block of 
steel fitting snugly into the opening of the receiver 
frame. When the lever is operated this bolt entire is 
pulled first down and then backwards, exposing the 
box magazine, from which another shell is proffered 



42 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

as soon as the extractor tosses the empty away. In 
the closing motion the bolt comes forward, pushing 
the new cartridge into the chamber before it, and at 
the end is pushed snugly up into the frame recess so 
that its front end rests against the cartridge head and 
the rear end against the solid metal of the frame. The 
only way this could fail would be by first lowering it 
in some way, which the recoil cannot do. 

This bolt is operated by a long, curved link, form- 
ing with the trigger guard and finger lever a U-shaped 
device pivoted to a lug underneath the frame. As 
the bolt is as long as the receiver frame and must come 
back its own length to expose the magazine, it follows 
that this link mechanism must be placed under the 
tang instead of under the receiver, as with the Win- 
chesters and Marlins. Undoubtedly an element of 
weakness, due to the hollowing out of the stock wood, 
but the compensation lies in having the weapon ham- 
merless and giving it a smooth and graceful outline. 
Once closed there is very little place anywhere on it 
for rain, snow, grit or twigs to get into the action; a 
good stalking rifle. 

As far as hammer or hammerless goes, that is a 
matter of individual preference. Whether to monkey 
with safeties and the sense of touch to tell you 
whether full cocked or no or whether to rely on a 
glance of the eye and a hammer always handy to the 
thumb is for you to decide. I am an old fogy and 
prefer the hammer that I can see and know just what 
it is doing and that no safety device can ever put on 
the fritz. I can endure a hammerless shotgun — that 
is, some hammerless shotguns ! — but I am not enough 



g s 




RIFLE MECHANICS 43 

weaned yet from the Queene Anne musket to adopt a 
rifle without any visible hammer. What would we 
old Ku-klux-klanners do without our Ku-Klux! 

The magazine of the Savage rifles is of the rotary 
box type ; that is, the shells are held by their rims in a 
rotating device that presents one at a time before the 
bolt head. The extraction is sidewise, and, as the 
shells are held by the rims, they are noiseless, and 
spitzer-pointed ones cannot be burred by hitting their 
points against the forward box walls. As might be 
expected with such an action, it lends itself particu- 
larly well to powerful cartridges, as there is no limit 
to the recoil the bolt can stand and no limit to the 
length of cartridge, since the bolt can be made as long 
as needful without introducing carrier or locking bolt 
problems. For moose and large game the .303 has al- 
ways been a favourite, also the .30-30 and .38-55 Sav- 
age for deer, while the two new products, the .220 and 
.250 high-power, high-velocity cartridges, after they 
had gotten over manufacturing troubles with the am- 
munition, turned out to be very good for all the 
smaller big game at long ranges where trajectory 
heights and loss of energy through distance counted. 

Among the automatics we have space to examine 
but one, the justly popular Remington .35, one of the 
best all-around big-game rifles made. For five shots 
quick, with plenty of steam behind them, this rifle fills 
the bill, and all American game, from the huge Alaska 
brown bears to the giant moose of New Brunswick, 
have gone down before it. Outside it follows the 
usual American gunbuilder's practice of nothing on it 
to catch and hold in the underbrush. The rifle is 



44 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

clean all over, no hollows or holes, no machine shop 
full of micrometre sights on its back. Inside, this 
automatic is simplicity itself. A spring and push-rod 
in the stock drive the breech bolt with its extractor 
and firing pin forward against the barrel, with its 
cartridge in the chamber. This barrel is inside a steel 
jacket, which is what you see looking like a barrel 
when you take the rifle in your hands, and it can slide 
back inside its jacket about three inches. When you 
fire the rifle the recoil of the cartridge against its bul- 
let drives the whole works, barrel and breech bolt to- 
gether, back inside the receiver, riding over the ham- 
mer on the way back. The breech block is held back 
for an instant while the barrel starts forward, urged 
by a spring inside its jacket. In doing so it leaves its 
cartridge shell behind, under the finger-nail of the ex- 
tractor, and, as soon as the barrel gets forward 
enough to clear the empty cartridge, the extractor 
tosses it out of the action. That gives a chance for 
the next cartridge to spring up out of the box maga- 
zine, tripping a release as it goes, which lets the breech 
block shoot forward again and the rifle is reloaded. 
All this takes place so quickly that you cannot see it 
done. All you see is a flash of brass as the cartridge 
pops up into the air, and you wonder on which side of 
your Stetson it is coming down ! Pulling the trigger 
releases the hammer again and the same cycle of op- 
erations is gone through. To load her single-shot you 
have an exterior knob on the breech bolt by which it 
can be grabbed and pulled back by hand until it 
catches. The barrel will stay in place, being held for- 
ward by its spring. Now put in your single shell (or 



RIFLE MECHANICS 45 

load the clip) and press on a release catch outside, 
when the bolt will fly shut and the rifle is ready for 
business. A rather clumsy safety consists in a flat 
lever, built on outside the receiver, which is in the way 
of the bolt and therefore on "safe" unless pressed 
down, when it exposes a large crack in the frame, 
through which all the dust in the world could get dur- 
ing a long stalk. Of course, you do not stalk with the 
safety off as a rule — but then again you do — some- 
times ! 

And what of the safety lugs on all this? For, ob- 
viously, the breech bolt and barrel must be pinned 
firmly together when the cartridge is going off. 
Here, for the first time, we come across the bolt lug, 
of which we will see no end in military rifles. Note, 
inside your Remington breech, two recesses. Into 
them fit the lugs of that breech bolt, when it is closed 
and you cannot see them. In opening, the first thing 
done is a cam motion inside the bolt, which rotates 
those lugs out of their recesses, and when you see 
them they are up and down instead of across the bar- 
rel. When the cartridge goes off it tends, of course, 
as in all rifles, to violently separate barrel and breech 
bolt. These lugs prevent it, but as soon as the breech 
bolt and cam mechanism overrun the trip below, the 
cam movement rotates the lugs and frees the bolt 
altogether. 

We have space to go into two of the military sport- 
ing rifles, the .30 U. S. Army Springfield and the Ross 
.280. Both are wonderful big-game rifles, having a 
maximum striking power, minimum trajectory height, 
maximum velocity, explosive bullets and all the rest 



46 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

of it. Of course, you mustn't have too many husky 
twigs in the way of these explosive bullets, or they will 
explode on the twigs instead of in the game, and the 
same is true of big, raw hip-bones and others too near 
the surface. Planted square, the bullets will do great 
execution, and if you do not mind having your meat 
full of little pieces of copper they are the latest up-to- 
the-minute idea on how to kill any large, wild mam- 
mal not as yet reduced to ownership and possession. 

Mechanically, the bolt-action rifle is simply any 
big-game rifle with the lever part of the mechanism 
left out. Instead, you crook up your right hand, quit- 
ting the trigger guard to do so, and pull back the bolt, 
or, with rifle at shoulder, reach up to it with your 
right hand or else take down the piece and rattle the 
bolt as quick as you can, get her back to shoulder and 
get another aim — for, with most animals, while you 
may have hit him your first shot, the vitality of most 
of them is amazing and your deer is making good time 
to parts unknown, your ram about to run himself over 
a precipice where you will never get down to him in a 
thousand years, or your bear is crawling into lodge- 
pole pine so thick that a weasel couldn't make it on 
crutches — and your earnest desire is to stop him, 
quick, before he goes another yard! 

Having eliminated the lever, to help us in the 
above, we have still the bolt. We might as well elimi- 
nate the hammer, while we are at it, and substitute a 
spring inside the bolt coiled around the firing pin. A 
knurled nut, which you can pull back if your fingers 
are not too numb with cold, serves to cock it, and a 
sort of wing which folds to right or left serves for a 



RIFLE MECHANICS 47 

safety, only on some of them one never can remember 
which side is "safe" and which "ready" in a crisis. 
So we are down to the lug question again and this 
brings up the subdivision of straight line vs. flip-flop, 
for our way of releasing the bolt. The foreign rifles 
and the Springfield do the flip-flop, a turn up and a 
pull back. The lug may be cut to fit in recesses in 
the chamber, as in the Teuton guns, or it may have in 
addition a stop on the bolt with a piece of the frame 
jutting up for a backstop as in the Springfield. 

The third lug is the rotary broken-thread screw, as 
exemplified in the Ross — Friday Folger's old 3-inch 
field piece breech mechanism over again! Pulling 
back on the handle of the 3-inch Navy breech block 
rotated the block free of its screw thread and the same 
swing threw open the piece for a new shell. Pulling 
back on the handle of the Ross bolt rotates the lugs, 
disengages their screw threads and releases the bolt 
free to come back. One less motion, a straight line 
pull instead of a right angle and then back. I cannot 
see that it makes much difference, as you have to take 
your hand away from the trigger vicinity with either 
of them — and get it back again — also readjust your 
shoulder and resight the piece. 

Simple as the bolt actions are, their makers seem 
to have a genius for getting small and fragile parts 
out where they are vulnerable to unsympathetic rocks, 
and do not seem to worry about the numerous little 
nooks and crannies in evidence, easily choked up with 
sand, pebbles, twigs, and hemlock needles. Compared 
with the smooth-finished surfaces of regular sporting 
rifles, with hardly a crack visible in the actions, good 



48 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

for any rough-and-tumble campaign in rocky, moun- 
tainous or forested country, these converted military 
sporters will stand a lot of cleaning up outside before 
being practical weapons. The original Miquelet flint 
lock had all its mechanism on the outside until some 
logical-minded Frenchman turned it around and sunk 
the works in the stock, and something like this ought 
to be done by the big rifle companies when they give 
us a bolt rifle made expressly for hunting big game. 
The Ross comes the nearest to being cleaned up of 
any of them at this time. Again, in the matter of 
their sights a lot of soldier ideas need to be adapted 
to rough country big game hunting. I had a fancy 
bolt sporter in my hands the other day, with half a 
pound of what appeared to be some sort of optical 
instrument on its breech, and a chimney full of good 
things on the end of its nose. I would hate to drop 
that rifle accidentally on the good old granite of York 
State, nor would I like to wade up to my neck in 
scraggs in Nova Scotia with it and expect to find the 
sights ready to see through at the end of the wade. 
Nor would it shine as a crutch in a ram stalk in the 
Cassiars, nor could it be laid in the alkali dust of Ari- 
zona with impunity. Yet we manage to drag our 
Winchesters, Rems, and Savages around in those 
countries without any particular care, with an occa- 
sional fall or a horse rolling on them, with mud and 
sand in the canoe bottom thickly spattering them — 
and yet when we pick them up they are generally 
ready to shoot, and keep on shooting as long as it is 
needful to work the lever. 



CHAPTER III 

RIFI.E SIGHTS 

RiFivD shooting for the woodsman is such a very 
different thing from rifle shooting for the military 
man that almost from the start it requires a totally 
different training. Summed up, the woodsman's train- 
ing must enable him to hit swiftly moving game at 
comparatively short ranges. This game, deer, moose, 
elk or bear, will be going at top speed, except for pos- 
sibly the first shot, and his progression will not be a 
straight line like a bird's flight but a series of bounds, 
and furthermore the view of him will not be against a 
sky-line but against a checkered gray background con- 
stantly interrupted by tree trunks, bushes, rocks and 
ravines. It takes the highest order of marksmanship 
to hit such a mark at ioo yards. Captain Carver, of 
glass ball fame, couldn't do it with any certainty, for 
it is infinitely harder than hitting balls and pennies in 
the air. Sighting and holding for woods shooting re- 
quires adaptation to the purpose intended and is en- 
tirely different kind of shooting than hitting a bull's- 
eye after a slow, careful aim at a long range target, 
which is the essence of military rifle training. 

The sights of your hunting rifle are of the first im- 
portance, for more misses are due to inadequate sights 

49 



50 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS. 

than anything else. A good sure holder, proud of his 
record on targets, and confident of getting into an 
eight-inch bull every time at 200 yards, will miss a 
real bull elk as big as a locomotive, clean, at eighty, 
simply because when he raises his rifle to fire 
he either cannot see the sights plainly and accu- 
rately against the dim figure of the game, or is 
unable to get enough time to refine his aim so as not to 
miss. Conversely the crack game shot will make a 
disgraceful score in a military match, thereby losing 
the last shred of his reputation. These things have 
happened time and again within the experience of all 
of us and it is generally traceable to sights and hold- 
ing, nothing else. Both men will tell you that they 
"shot rotten," but as a matter of fact they shot as well 
as they knew how, and missed — because the game was 
a new one to them. 

The sights of a rifle are like the lens and crosshairs 
of a surveyor's transit, the most important things on 
the rifle, for they are what you aim with. Lots of 
poor sights are sold on game rifles, most of them theo- 
retically good, but mighty mean things to pick up a 
bouncing deer with. The most important is the rear 
sight, for it controls the whole aim. A plain flat bar, 
devoid of any notch whatever, is often advocated as 
the best rear sight on the theory that the eye naturally 
finds its centre, but the minute error that the eye is 
sure to make in locating that exact centre means a 
miss every time at any range at all. The flat bar, 
with a silver centreline, or mother-of-pearl triangle 
showing the centre by its point, is, on the contrary, one 
of the best sights made, for it permits exact centring 



RIFLE SIGHTS 51 

by the eye and at the same time has the great advan- 
tage of the flat bar sight, namely cutting off exact 
amounts from the front sight. For, any one can 
make a good line sight, that is, hit vertically above or 
below the bull (a sure miss with game) but it takes a 
marksman to make it an exact range shot horizon- 
tally, and this is easiest done by a rear sight that en- 
ables the front sight to be cut coarse or fine with 
accuracy and clearness of vision. 

For this same reason all the deep notch sights are 
hard in the woods. On a target, in the open, they are 
very fine, for the aid they give in drawing down the 
bead into the centre of the rear notch, but in the 
woods, with the animal scratching gravel as fast as 
he can hoof it, you can't see the front sight in the 
notch with any clearness, so you raise it up in your 
anxiety to know that it is well centred and yet still 
have an eye on the game, hold low and pull trigger — 
with the result an overshoot. No, you want a rear 
sight that will let you see all around both sides of the 
front sight, will let you know by the amount of it 
that you are cutting off just how fine you are drawing, 
while the centreline on the rear bar gives your eye a 
centre to work to. A shallow notch in the rear bar, 
one rather wide so as to see lots of daylight on each 
side of the front sight, is nearly as good as a white 
centreline, for the eye quickly notes and corrects any 
discrepancy between the daylight on one side of the 
front sight and on the other. In a dim light, or wuzzy 
background, this advantage disappears and again we 
get back to a white centreline. This latter in its turn 
is not all heaven and angel harps, for if your front 



52 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS- 

sight is silver or ivory it will blur right in with the 
rear white line, making it hard and slow work to cut 
off just the right amount of front sight. The rem- 
edy for it of course is to stop the white line or triangle 
about a thirty-second inch below the top of the bar, 
giving you a black edge for a cut-off. Another ad- 
vantage of this form of rear sight is that it will not 
let the front sight fool you and make you shoot "off 
the light." In the woods all square edged front sights 
and all beads show a light point or line of light on the 
side the light is coming from. As this shiny point 
goes down into the dim depths of a deep notch the eye 
naturally takes it for the sight's centre and you so 
hold, with the result of placing your bullet several 
inches away from the mark on the side opposite from 
where the light is coming. The flat rear bar lets you 
see this line of light in its true relation to the centre 
of the sight, and that so clearly that even in the hurry 
of a running shot at big game you will make no such 
mistake. When the sun is shining brightly, however, 
the flat bar sight is apt to have a mirage or glare on 
it and then its best substitute is a very wide notch, 
with knife edges to cut out glare, in which the whole 
front sight is seen. The eye easily lines it up centred 
correctly, and, for any shot, where you want to see all 
you can of the animal it is a very easily aimed and 
accurate sight. Both of these sights, mounted to- 
gether on one slot-pedestal, both folding flat on the 
barrel at will, can be had in one combination sight. 

Another theoretical advantage that does not work 
out very well in woods shooting is to have the rear 
sight as far back as possible, to get a long distance 



OPEN SIGHTS OF THE .22 RIFLES AND SPRINGFIELD ARMY BATTLE SIGHT 




No. 4 No. 3 No. 28 No. 5 axb. 

IVORY, GOLD BEAD AND GLOBE FRONT SIGHTS 



No. 31 




-0_ 



Is 



ANTELOPE TARGETS FOR CELLAR 

RANGE 

5 shots, 3 sec. time limit. 
Half actual size. 




CAMP-FIRE CLUB RISING BEAR 

TARGET 

Length about 7 feet. 





FOLDING BAR AND LEAF REAR SIGHT 



FOLDING PEEP 
SIGHT 



RIFLE SIGHTS 53 

between sights. The advantage is discounted by the 
fact that the eye cannot then see both sights and the 
game, because the focus differs for the rear sight and 
the front sight and game. Front sight and game are 
both clear enough, because the front sight is so far 
away from the eye (about two feet ten inches) that it 
is as it were, in the "universal focus" of the eye, but 
the rear sight is a hopeless blur. To avoid blurring, 
two remedies are devised, the peep sight through 
which the eye looks, and the forward placed notch. 
The latter consists in simply placing the rear sight 
notch well forward on the barrel, eighteen inches from 
the eye instead of the old-time twelve or fourteen 
inches, so that it is quite clear and the eye sees all 
three things, rear sight, front sight, and game clearly, 
the rear sight being only a little blurred. With such 
a rear sight as the flat bar and centring triangle this 
slight blur makes no practical difference as all three 
can be seen with plenty of clearness enough to centre 
accurately and draw the right front sight, and for 
quick shots on running game in dim light its advan- 
tages far outweigh the disadvantages the short dis- 
tance (sixteen inches) between front sight and rear 
sight. 

Remains the peep. To my mind it is up and away 
the quickest thing to get a rifle on the game that there 
is. At first I used to try to centre the front sight in 
the peep aperture, and so lost many a good shot for 
lack of time. The last shot so lost was the rare great 
horned owl which I had a shot at on the Lumbee 
River trip. The owl that makes the familiar deep 
hoot in the woods at night is the barred owl, not the 



54 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

great horned species, the latter being much rarer. 
This individual flew into a cypress swamp ahead of 
the canoe and my partner at the stern backed the canoe 
for all he was worth to let me get a shot at him. I 
whipped up the rifle and soon settled the bead on his 
breast, but the rear aperture did not exactly centre, 
and while I was adjusting this the canoe was whirling 
around, making me turn more and more to the left. 
Then tree branches got in the way, while trying to get 
the front sight on him, in true centre, in a clear view, 
and then the canoe turned so much as to permit no 
more corkscrewing of my body, and, by the time that 
was straightened out, the current had taken us much 
farther down stream and more trees intervened, so we 
had to let him go. Lieut. Whelen told me on one of 
his visits that any old centre with the peep sufficed, so 
long as you saw the front sight through it and had its 
bead on the game; even off centre well to one side 
would not make a difference of over an inch at ordi- 
nary game ranges. I knew that, with a small and 
distant bull's eye, centring in the peep made all the 
difference between "possibles" and an indifferent 
score, but a little shooting with the peep aperture more 
or less out of centre with bead showed that this dif- 
ference was not enough to pay for the time wasted in 
trying to centre. An ordinary tang peep of 1-32 in. 
aperture will let you see a mountain goat at 100 yards 
entire, besides the whole front sight and part of the 
barrel it stands on, yet the total possible error in off 
centring will be less than 1-64 in. out of the centre- 
line of the barrel. The total throw of the bullet, then, 
would be V/2, inches off centre at 100 yards. Using 



RIFLE SIGHTS 55 

this peep and paying practically no attention to the 
rear aperture one can slam the front sight on or ahead 
of the game just as quickly as arm can move and eye 
catch sight. 

The only disadvantage of the peep is that in dim 
lights there is a perceptible interval before the pupil 
of the eye can expand enough to see through it clearly 
after being set for the surrounding illumination. 
Any big game rifle in which the owner puts his confi- 
dence should be well supplied with sights for all con- 
tingencies and there is no reason in the world why a 
couple of folding sights cannot be put forward on the 
barrel and a folding tang peep on the stock, giving the 
user open sights for quick sighting in dim lights at 
short range, and a tang peep for slow, accurate, long 
range work in any light or quick work at long range 
in good light. 

Never depend on a peep alone. There will 
come many a shot when the light is so bad that no 
quick sight can be had with it, and not a few where 
no sight at all can be made. I have shot grouse over 
the open bar when it was so dark that only the dim 
black outline of the bird and the shadowy bulk of the 
front sight could be made out, yet it meant meat for 
the mulligan that very night. Have your peep either 
folding or flexible, if a tang sight, and raisable if a 
receiver peep, putting a folding leaf or bar sight in 
the old buckhorn notch so that it can be folded flat 
down on the barrel when the peep is in use. Do not 
try to have both tang peep and leave in the 
buckhorn, for the notch of the latter gets right 
into the peep line of sight and you are simply shooting 



56 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS. 

a buckhorn notch with restricted eyesight and all the 
advantages of the peep are at once lost. And see to 
it that these things all "work" properly ; that the leaf 
sights are not so loose as to be continually falling back 
out of plumb, that the peep releases easily and does not 
stick anywhere, and also that it is lined up true, for, 
while it makes little difference if the front sight is 
not absolutely centred in the aperture, it makes a vast 
difference if the peep itself is not on the true centre- 
line. As they come from the factory those that I 
have used have been horribly out of true, requiring 
several shims of paper tinder their pedestal on one 
edge or the other to throw the peep aperture over on 
to the exact centreline. 

The choice of a front sight requires quite as much 
thought as the rear one. The military front sight, 
showing a black, square section to the eye, will give 
the user many a heartache if he hunts deer with it. 
Some sort of bright front is essential on game, for a 
black sight is lost against the dim coloration of the 
animal. The military sight is also too high, too weak 
and too movable for hunting purposes, and the steel 
shield that guardsmen carry to slip over it would have 
no place at all in the woods. I made a fair hunting 
sight out of the one on a Mauser that I once owned by 
riling a 45 degree flat across the upper rear corner of 
the sight. It gave a square, well-defined, bright bar 
of light for the front sight, one easily seen against dim 
brown and gray shapes, and one that would reflect 
skylight back into the eyes much later in the day than 
a bead could be seen clearly. Fred Vreeland, of the 
Camp Fire Club, applied this idea to a knife blade 



RIFLE SIGHTS 57 

hunting sight originally; he filed a long slant on the 
rear face of the sight so that it would reflect light back 
into the eyes, making it always a bright sight. The 
plumb vertical rear face seen on so many front sights 
is a deceiving thing. Swing the rifle around and note 
how the front sight goes from black as you face the 
light, through a shiny white line along either edge as 
you swing across the light, to full white when the 
light shines full on that plumb rear face. Any sight 
that makes all those changes is "too many" for a 
hunter to keep track of when the game is on the 
jump. I have obviated it on my two big game rifles 
by filing that same 45 degree flat across the rear upper 
corner, the whole face of the flat being only 1-16 inch. 
It presents a square, bright bead in all lights, no mat- 
ter how you swing the rifle, because it reflects over- 
head light which is constant. I like it better than the 
gold and ivory beads because these are more or less 
weak, and the plain front sight is undoubtedly the 
strongest and simplest thing of the kind made. For 
those who prefer the bead I should think that the 
gold bead front sight would be the best selection, 
as it is strong, and shows up equally well on brown, 
black, or white game. 

Having chosen the sights, the next important 
thing is the ranges you can get with them. A rifle 
sighted "point blank" at 200 yards will miss you a 
lot of game in the woods, for seldom do you get any 
such range, and you will always have to hold under 
to score a hit at shorter ranges. The average woods 
rifle shoots some such cartridge as the .30-30, .30-40, 
.303, .35 and .405, all of which will have about a six- 



58 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

inch trajectory at 200 yards, that is, the bullet will 
be six inches high in mid-flight at 100 yards. There- 
fore, if you put the bead to break his shoulder or hit 
just back of the shoulder in the heart at 100 yards 
the bullet will go over him, even if you draw the front 
sight just right. There is no use saying that you 
will always hold under to allow for this ; in the ex- 
citement of shooting at game you have a lot of 
things to think about, finding a clear space to 
shoot, getting the mitt off your trigger finger, get- 
ting the strap under your elbow if you use one, watch- 
ing his jump, finding the right lead — if added to all 
this you have to do some lightning calculations for 
an imaginary spot six inches under where you have 
already figured, the chances are you will forget all 
about it or guess wrong, with the result of a miss. 
No; the thing to do is to see that the rifle shoots 
"point blank" at 100 yards and then hold high or 
draw coarse when you get a long range shot. Most 
hunting rifles are already sighted to hit where the 
bead or top of sight is held at 100 yards, but some 
field practice with them until you know just where 
your groups land is essential. A shot then offered 
at 75 yards or 125 will not introduce a sight error 
of more than an inch. Any fool can hit a vertical 
string, cutting it and bringing down the apple for 
the applause of the multitude, but now is the time to 
learn your front so nicely that you can hit a horizontal 
string ! 

Having gotten well acquainted with your rifle at 
100 yards and vicinity, so that you know what she will 
do when you see your sights in a certain position, 



RIFLE SIGHTS 59 

the next thing is to provide for long-range work, 200, 
300 and 400 yards. There are two ways to allow 
for increased range — see more of your front sight, 
or raise the rear sight a definite amount. All receiver 
peeps are provided with such a quick method of shift- 
ing the rear sight for various long ranges that it 
takes but a moment to push down the releasing lever, 
push up the frame to the required mark, and tighten 
the lever again. One can do it without hardly taking 
eye off the game, making all the changes with the 
hands alone and just glancing down to see the right 
mark for an instant while the thumbs finish the 
change. To do more than this it is hopeless to ask 
of a big game hunter, who, after a stalk of four 
hours around a great mountain rim is not going to 
risk his shot by monkeying with a burl nut or other 
complicated adjustment when he knows that any min- 
ute the ram or goat may wind him, or take alarm 
from some other cause and start to move while the 
rifle is being resighted. The quickest range shifting 
device is the combination of three leaf sights either 
on one base or three bases, any one of which can be 
pushed up with a move of the thumb, never taking 
the eyes off the game and never moving the rifle from 
ready position. The flat bar rear sight and straight 
front sight permit of very accurate cutting off of 
the amount of front sight seen to one who knows 
his rifle. The three leaf sights together on a modern 
rifle hardly involve a change in height of over a six- 
teenth of an inch, and any practised marksman can 
cut off a like amount from his front sight with a 
little practice at known ranges. 



60 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS . 

The tang peep is at its greatest disadvantage in 
this shifting of ranges. It has a burl nut on the sleeve 
and a locknut under this. You are to loosen the one 
and turn the other so as to raise the peep shank to 
a given notch cut on it beforehand; absolutely too 
much to ask of a hunter whose stalk is made and 
whose game is already uneasy or maybe running. The 
peep cuts off nothing of the front sight; you see all 
of it, the barrel and the game and a lot of the scenery 
besides. It is fine and quick within its range ; outside 
of it your best plan is to know how much over him 
to hold the bead for longer ranges. A final thing that 
must be looked to on the tang peep is its position for- 
ward of the eye on the tang. With the kick of such 
a powerful weapon as the .35 Winchester, for in- 
stance, the least distance it should be forward of the 
eye to prevent its being kicked back into the eye socket, 
or else strike your frontal bone is 23/2 inches. This 
will clear for offhand and sitting positions; prone, 
your head is so much farther forward that it will 
surely come into your eye and you must hold your 
head back to allow for it. Many of the flexible tang 
peeps are set so far back for the particular rifle for 
which they are sold that they will come back into your 
eye anyhow ; the makers were evidently so much more 
interested in dodging the breech bolt with their pre- 
cious sight that they gave no thought to the shooter's 
optic. However, a good tang peep is such a joy for 
quick and accurate shooting at anything near its 
normal range as to be worth some trial to find the 
right peep for your rifle. The one sold for the model 
'94 Winchesters fits the model '95, .35 calibre much 



RIFLE SIGHTS 61 

better than the one sold for that rifle itself. I would 
not shoot the latter for the sake of my eyes, as it sets 
the tang half an inch farther back than the one for 
the model '94, and this latter one is only just enough 
forward to clear your eye when the rifle kicks back. 
For a larger man, with heavier bones and more flesh 
on them this would not be the case, probably, but when 
you do get a tang peep see that it has not this fault, 
and if it has, look over the stock in trade and pick 
out one that sets it further forward. Never mind 
the bolt running into it; it makes not the slightest 
difference in the action, and the flexible feature of 
the sight is for that very purpose of rolling back when 
the bolt passes over it. 



CHAPTER IV 

AIMING AT BIG GAM# 

Ws now come to the important part of holding in 
big-game rifle-shooting. You read much of making 
a human tripod of yourself, to get steadiness, and 
probably wonder why so much stress is laid on it when 
most of the shots you had required a swift, easy swing 
rather than any steadiness. What you really need 
is a sharp eyesight and a prompt, accurate trigger- 
finger. Any trigger which "creeps" is out of the ques- 
tion for woods shooting. You want an instant re- 
lease, of not over four pounds trigger pull. All the 
military "dodges" for a steady, rock-like foundation 
on which to base your shot are "nix," but of course 
should be learned, as there will be long-range, still 
shots in which they will be useful. But the shooting 
that you will use far more is a swift swing of the 
rifle on or ahead of the game, and a quick, simultane- 
ous trigger-pull the second that the bead is where you 
want it. Such great game shots as Lyman and Walter 
Winans insist on this training as the only one. I 
personally have found use for the military system, and 
expect to use it a good deal more, especially in moun- 
tain work, as time goes by. But, even after the first 
shot is thus expended and a hit scored, even a mortally 
wounded animal will in most cases start off at top 

62 



AIMING AT BIG GAME 63 

speed, and it's up to you to hammer him as long as 
you can see to shoot. The quicker he is down to stay 
the less your chances of losing him are. It's no fun 
to try to find a deer a hundred yards from where he 
stood when you put in the mortal heart shot ; he may 
have gone almost anywhere and left no great amount 
of blood behind to give you a clue. Mountain game 
is even worse, for it has an engaging habit of run- 
ning over precipices and rolling down slopes, break- 
ing its horns, and staggering off to places where no 
one but a fly could crawl down to it, to let you miss 
him much after the first shot. And then you are right 
back to the woodsman's art of chucking it to him as 
he hops, with a rifle. No; cut out that Guardsman 
stunt of holding the fore-end on the tip of thumb and 
forefinger ; get a firm grip on fore-end and tang, and 
learn, first of all, to shoot standing up in any old posi- 
tion so that you soak it to him at the instant that the 
bead is in the right place. It is not hard. Four shots 
out of five into a standing deer as big as a rabbit at 
75 yards is a score that any deer-hunter should make 
easily if he is going to go after them in the woods. 
Personally, I never found any gain by holding longer 
than it took to swing the rifle on the mark and fire. 
To wait longer would be simply to swing it back and 
catch another sight, so why not let off in the first 
place? A military man, not used to this style of 
shooting, is of course at a great disadvantage when 
you begin to speed him up. Shooting against a 
"crack," on fifteen seconds time limit, I once ran up 
a score of 85 against his 56. He shot his first ones 
as fast as he could aim, with the result that they all 



64 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

went wild, and then got off the rest of his shots at 
about 4 seconds each, scoring a few bull's-eyes, but 
both in number of bull's-eyes and total score my hunts- 
man's way of aiming had it on him. Give him plenty 
of time and he would have made every shot a bull's- 
eye, but what good would that have done him with 
a deer in the woods? I have made my best "pos- 
sibles," ten successive bulls, by just swinging the 
sights across the bull and letting drive as I crossed, 
and never could equal them by slow and careful hold- 
ing. The point is that it is just as accurate as the 
slower method and infinitely more serviceable on 
game ; in fact, it is the only practical method on game. 
Therefore, begin at the start with moving targets 
at close range. A pendulum tin can, a blue rock 
thrown in the air will teach you more woodsman rifle- 
shooting than any amount of range practice. Learn, 
first of all, just how much of your front sight seen 
means dead in the mark, and then always see that 
much sight when you lay the piece. Next, plant it 
on the mark, or, if it is moving, ahead of the mark 
the right amount, and let off at once. That's all there 
is to it, training of the trigger-finger to let off, the 
arms to hold the rifle sights in line, the eye to see the 
mark and the sights, at the same time. A barrel roll- 
ing down hill, a cardboard deer, bear, or rabbit hung 
from a trolley wheel, running on a taut wire with a 
slant to it like the cash runways in a department store, 
cans and blue rocks tossed into the air — these are the 
marks that count for real training. I quite agree with 
T. S. Van Dyke, the still hunter, in his remark that 
what the woodsman needs is the ability to hit a three- 



AIMING AT BIG GAME 65 

inch bull at 40 yards every time for ordinary work, 
and the same at 75 yards every time for proficiency. 
Any one that can do that on three-second time limit 
with no misses is good enough for the woods. Mili- 
tary work begins where the huntsman leaves off, and 
requires a different training. At that, they should 
provide for quick, accurate firing during a charge or 
melee when the ranges are close and two seconds is 
the most that any one should have to aim and fire. 

A miss is as good as a mile. What counts in hunt- 
ing are the hits only. There are no 4's and 3's to help 
along the score, and therein is the danger of target 
practice. One gets contented with a string of fours, 
all of which are misses, and the other fellow with his 
bull's-eye may lose to you because of a wild 2 or a 
mean 3, in spite of the fact that he hit and you did 
not. Your total striking circle in a deer is about 16 
inches, 30 in elk, moose or bear; get the notion that 
it is either to hit inside of that or not at all. Every 
running animal has to be led; not right ahead of him, 
but above or below him, depending upon whether he 
is going up or down in his bound. An elk's back will 
rise ten feet in the air in mid-jump, a deer about six 
feet; if you fire then you will most likely overshoot 
as he will have come down from two to four feet 
while your bullet is getting there, so try to get him 
coming down, and hold low and in front. About two 
feet in a hundred yards is none too much. Like the 
wing-shooter, you can cut this down a bit by getting 
the knack of flipping the rifle ahead as you pull trig- 
ger, it then gets its lead while the hammer is coming 
down. To get to know your rifle with this kind of 



66 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS . 

shooting takes practice at moving marks, and not slow 
ones either, but marks going about twenty miles an 
hour at least. That is going about fifty feet a second, 
yet many of your shots will be at this speed and will 
need lots of holding ahead and lots of practice to 
know how much. 

After climbing a steep slope or running fast to 
make a quick detour you will be sweating like a bull, 
and your fingers will be slippery and cannot grasp 
the fore-end with any firmness. For this reason 
checking on both tang and fore-end is essential; if 
you bought your rifle plain, do it yourself with a check- 
ing tool which you can buy from the sporting-goods 
store for fifty cents. Or have the local gunsmith do 
it ; but never omit it. 

Again, when tracking elk or deer in the snow, be 
careful about letting your right hand get numb or 
sluggish. A finger-mitt is no good for the actual 
shooting, it is far too clumsy, and you cannot feel the 
trigger sensitively through it. I lost a fine shot once, 
from this very cause. He had been watching me, and 
suddenly burst into a dead run about seventy yards 
off. I had no time to get off the glove and so fired 
with the mitt on. The rifle went off before I was 
ready and I overshot. I was just drawing the front 
sight fine when it fired, and I knew I had missed. 
A friend of mine lost a deer from numbness because 
when he started the deer he found that his hand, only 
a short time out of the mitt, was so numb that his 
thumb simply would not raise the hammer. He 
wanted it to, all right, but there was nothing doing 
with the thumb ! The best way is to carry your rifle 



g w 



* 3 
| 3 



AIMING AT BIG GAME 67 

in your left hand and keep the right bare and tucked 
into your coat or shirt, on your breast so that it will 
be warm and ready to use instantly. 

A rifle strap is essential in the western moun- 
tains. In the eastern woods it is more or less of a 
nuisance, unless you use it in firing. I do so, and 
find that it not only gives you steadiness, but checks 
that wild impulse to jerk up the rifle on sight of 
game. The rifle must not be jerked up ; raise it slowly, 
taking the time to align the sights so that they will 
fall to your shoulder practically trained true. My 
strap is just long enough to slip my elbow into, and 
when the piece is at shoulder the strap is taut and helps 
hold the rifle firmly so that one can swing the sights 
without wabbling. In raising the rifle the strap drops 
naturally around my elbow, and as it comes to shoul- 
der it begins to set fast. In a cross wind it is the 
only thing, for the amount that a gusty wind will 
wabble a well-held barrel is almost unbelievable. For 
that reason avoid a standing shot where the wind is 
heavy. The strap should be wide and soft, tapering 
down at each end to an inch. The bronze swivel 
buckle is the right one for the fore-end, for, in run- 
ning from it over your shoulder, the buckle swivels, 
thus feeding the strap flat on your shoulder and not at 
a twist as it would do if the buckle were merely 
hinged. A hinged bronze buckle goes at the lower end 
of the strap on the stock. 

Your rifle is your hunting companion, your best 
friend, and the heart of your trip. Pick out the one 
that you fancy and then stick to it, learning all about 
it, "dolling it up," with sights and straps and checks, 



68 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

everything that will make the weapon more efficient. 
Every man has his own pets ; I will describe my three 
and their sights, not that they are a model for any 
one else, but to give some idea of the practical con- 
siderations that went into their selection. My west- 
ern rifle is a .35 Winchester, Model '95, a cheer- 
ful young cannon with a knockout punch. She 
weighs but 8% pounds for all that, and has a hand- 
some stock with checkered fore-end and tang. I 
owned another just like her, only plainer, for some 
time before I was sure that she was the rifle for 
me. She has a plain front sight with the 45 degree 
filed across the rear upper corner of the knife ; a com- 
bination wide notch leaf and flat bar with pearl tri- 
angle sight on the barrel, and a flexible tang peep on 
the tang. I use the tang for most shooting, the flat 
bar for all short-range shooting, with the .380 supple- 
mental in the Marble-Brayton steel auxiliary cart- 
ridge for small game met on the trail. Rifle No. 2 
is a .32-20 Winchester Model '92, for eastern work 
on deer and hiking trips where you want a good, all- 
around rifle that can get squirrels, woodchucks, ducks, 
etc., with the .32 S. & W. short, and the H. V. 
cartridge for deer and long-range shots at fox, duck 
or hawk. She has plain front sight, filed; receiver 
tang peep, and folding wide-notch leaf and flat bar. 
The receiver peep is raised out of the way in dim light 
and the other sight used; otherwise I use the peep 
entirely, for quickness and accuracy. Rifle No. 3 is 
the Kid's treasure, also my own. It is a .22 Stevens 
Favorite, shooting all the .22 cartridges. It has a 
folding tang peep, and combination globe front sight 



AIMING AT BIG GAME 69 

giving a ring-and-pinhead or ivory bead at will, and 
the barrel sight is a folding wide-notch leaf. The 
latter, in combination with the ivory bead, is the gen- 
eral choice for game, the tang peep and pin-head for 
long-range work. With these the Kid once made a 
44x50 at 100 yards, and I had to make a 47 to keep 
him from trampling all over me! All three of these 
rifles are some busy, and they suit us a whole lot. 
And this last is a quality in a rifle by no means to 
be overlooked. Do not stop with a weapon that you 
are not completely satisfied with. 



CHAPTER V\ 

TRIGGER REX3ASS 

If you will stop to consider it a minute, the release 
of the trigger is the gist of rifle-shooting. If the 
hammer falls at the precise instant that the rifle is 
sighted on the mark, a hit will be scored, and this up 
to about as far as one can see to shoot or hold, with 
modern flat-trajectory, high-velocity rifles. The mat- 
ter of a perfect trigger release is, then, something for 
each individual to study carefully and practise at until 
it becomes second nature. Most beginners will recall 
that, in sighting a rifle, their attention was first cen- 
tred on finding the mark, next on holding on it, and 
then finally on letting ofT the trigger. By the time 
this last had been successfully attended to, the hold- 
ing had been forgotten entirely or else left to hap- 
hazard. Such is one of the tribulations of the begin- 
ner in rifle-shooting. 

Another is that of hard trigger release. Some 
rifles are sent out with absurdly heavy trigger pulls, 
and the unfortunate beginner, after getting all 
through with his aim and being at last satisfied with 
the holding, presses the trigger only to find that it 
refuses to budge without displacing the aim. He next 
yanks nervously at it, while the rifle sights do a swing 
around the three ring, but still no report. Then he 

70 



TRIGGER RELEASE 71 

calls up all his reserve concentration and tries to do 
two things at once — holding on the bull and releasing 
a trigger by main force — two major operations that 
would tax the abilities of a veteran ! And in no form 
of shooting is the light trigger release of more im- 
portance than in the revolver, for here it is virtually 
impossible to make consistent scores with a hard-pull- 
ing trigger. 

Again, there are many rifles with a creeping trig- 
ger. These are fine for target work, but require special 
training to use with big game. The creep reaches a 
definite end, which the sensitive trigger finger can dis- 
tinctly feel, after which a little added pressure re- 
leases the bolt firing-pin ( for it is in the military rifle 
that one encounters this form of trigger release the 
most). For target-shooting we have no quarrel with 
this release, as one concentrates on a steady hold at 
the instant the end of the creep is reached, but with 
big game, especially deer on the move, it is difficult 
to use, for the release is not instantaneous and there 
is no time to feel for the creep, and if you have trig- 
ger-finger mitts on you cannot feel it anyhow, and 
must release without knowing just when the rifle is 
going off. With pistol-shooting the creep is still 
worse, for here you must have an instantaneous re- 
lease. Once I was in a match where a fine, high- 
power, foreign pistoj was the prize, the shooters us- 
ing the pistol itself in the competition. In that match 
were some of the best pistol and revolver men in the 
ranks of modern sportsmen, yet none could make a 
decent score and the prize went to about the most 
erratic shot in the bunch. That pistol had an awful 



72 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

creep. You found the bull and then let off; that is, 
you thought you were going to, but all the response 
your trigger finger got was an infinitesimal amount of 
creep. This was repeated several times until when 
the pistol finally went off it was unexpectedly and your 
bullet might land anywhere. 

Modern big game rifles, exclusive of the converted 
military sporters, are all instantaneous release. The 
trigger pulls vary from 2 pounds, which is about as 
light as it is at all safe, to 7 pounds, which is far too 
heavy to do good shooting with. My own rifles, the 
survivors of a very extensive collection, for I have 
cleared out most of them so as to really know the ones 
I use constantly, vary from 3 pounds trigger pull, 
for a target Stevens, to A^/2 and 5^4 pounds for a 
medium power and high power big-game Winchester, 
respectively. Of these the 3-pound pull is undoubt- 
edly the nicest to let off, albeit you have to get used 
to the sudden way it lets go when, perhaps, you are 
not quite ready. For forest work, on big game, I 
should consider this pull too light and too apt to pre- 
mature. For small game it is just right, as you need 
fine shooting for them and usually get an instant to 
aim in when the animal is still. The 4^ -pound pull 
is noticeably heavier, enough so to take your attention 
away from the aim, until you get used to it. In all 
trigger release your mind should be concentrated on 
the aim, the trigger being attended to subconsciously, 
the same way you see something else out of the tail 
of your eye when concentrating your gaze on a par- 
ticular object. Yet you have considerable nervous 
excitement to allow for in the shooting of big game, 



TRIGGER RELEASE 73 

and will find too light a pull will always result in 
more prematures than you would like to remember. 
Again, your shot may come after a great deal of vio- 
lent exertion, running hard to get to a vantage point, 
executing a difficult stalk, climbing hard or worming 
your way through difficult underbrush, and your heart 
will be pounding so you can hear it, with your mouth 
open, and your muscles will be in anything but a 
calm state. Under such conditions too light a pull, 
such as for cool target work, will result in your un- 
doing. Four and a half pounds is as light as I would 
care to have in the woods, and such a contraption as 
a set trigger, with extra hair-trigger, would cost more 
tribulation in trying to manage it properly than it 
would be worth. 

My heavy big-game rifle has a S/i -pound pull. 
There is plenty of good reason back of this, too. Con- 
sider that you have a number of things to provide for 
besides hitting your game. The recoil in a high-power 
rifle of this calibre represents about 2200 foot-pounds, 
and you must hold it firm and solid against your arm, 
cuddling it well in on your chest like a shotgun. The 
right thumb must be laid over along the tang, not 
curled over it, or it will take your nose off, the kick 
will be severe, so that your grip on tang and fore- 
end is hard and firm, and altogether the muscles of 
the hand are under considerable tension. The trigger 
finger has a long hook to make, and so can put on 
considerable pressure without conscious effort. Fi- 
nally, I use a sling, not the military kind that requires 
several turns of your arm and shoulder in it, but the 
rifle carrying strap is of such a length that it will 



74 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

just come taut when your left elbow is crooked into 
it and the piece pressed to the shoulder. This is a 
tremendous aid in steadying the rifle in a cross wind 
and making your holding come easily to rest. I 
wouldn't be without it for worlds, and, of course, a 
rifle without a strap in two weeks of wood cruising 
is a sorry thing, so why not have it of the right length 
to aid in aiming? This strap introduces tension of 
its own, and once I let off prematurely while crook- 
ing into it and swinging the piece up. It cost me a 
high place in the deer match at a Camp Fire Club 
outing, as I already had three nice shots in his brisket, 
but didn't know it, as the deer matches are not scored 
until the string of shots is fired. No, .1 am perfectly 
satisfied with 5^ pounds on that rifle, and would not 
change it, more especially when I think of possible 
shots fired with a woolen trigger mitt on the hand, for 
more than once I have had to fire in bitterly cold 
weather when there was no time to even pull off the 
mitt. 

In revolver work, as I have said before, the soul of 
it is the trigger release. Two pounds to two and a 
half is ample; any more will handicap you unmer- 
cifully. Good revolver scores are the result of a 
steady arm, a cool head and strict attention to de- 
tail — that is, seeing to it that your holding is correct 
when the hammer is coming down. So many shooters 
do fine aiming and then lose all control at the instant 
of firing, with the result of an erratic group. When 
you see such a group, question the shooter and you 
will find that he does not distinctly recall just what 
he was doing at the instant of release. A good re- 



TRIGGER RELEASE 75 

volver man can call his shot just like a rifleman — 
that is, he remembers just where his sights were at 
the instant the revolver went off, and that shows that 
he was on the job all through the aim, and not willy- 
eyed after the brain order to release went into execu- 
tion. All this presupposes a trigger release that will 
be light enough not to communicate its disturbance 
to the muscles holding the pistol, and this is got around 
two pounds. I have seen many good guns that went 
as high as four pounds, and the average is three. 
Better lighten to two if you want to make fine scores. 
And the checked trigger is another feature of great 
use on a revolver. It distributes the weight of your 
finger flesh evenly over the surface of the trigger, 
so that the pull does not have to be concentrated at 
any one point, as in the bend of a smooth trigger. 
It makes a very noticeable difference in the ease of 
pull, so order a checked trigger with your gun when 
you get it, and make things just as easy for your- 
self as possible. It is worth the money and pays for 
itself in the ammunition that you will save in getting 
to be proficient. 

Among my shotguns, the boy's 28-gauge has a 5- 
pound release; the hammerless 12-gauge double, 6 
pounds in both right and left, and the 12-gauge old 
hammer gun that I use for ducking in the salt marshes 
has 7 pounds for the right and 6 pounds for the left. 
These pulls are about right for their separate uses. 
For a boy's hand, 5 pounds is heavy enough, yet it 
requires a firm pressure to let off, and for a man's 
strength, 6 pounds is nice. Seven pounds is a trifle 
too heavy, but in the muscular work of fast gun- 



76 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

swinging and gun handling you do not want anything 
light and apt to premature. Shotgun trigger release 
is, of course, instantaneous, the point of the trigger 
sear lifting directly out of the notch in the hammer 
without any intervening leverage as in military rifles. 
In consideration of the vast influence the trigger re- 
lease and hammer fall have on one's swing, it must 
be practised until eye and trigger-finger work together 
as subconsciously as in golf form or any other mat- 
ter of muscular skill. A man with a poor shotgun 
trigger release will make a most erratic shot. Even 
assuming that he swings alike each time, and that 
the birds are as regular as a clay pigeon on a calm 
day, he will miss a lot of them through slow or fast 
release. 

Trigger-finger training is, fortunately, a most in- 
expensive amusement. With rifle or revolver it sim- 
ply needs a tack head in the wall of your room or a 
mark out in the yard reduced to correspond to given 
long ranges. Daily practice on these costs nothing 
and trains two things — the set of muscles that hold 
and swing the rifle or revolver, and the trigger finger 
and eye partnership that lets off at the mark. You 
will score mentally many a miss before you get so 
you think you are hitting them freely. Then real 
practice at a range will show you up some more. 

In nearly every armory they have an improvement 
on plain sighting practice, also very inexpensive. It 
consists in a Springfield, hung in movable tongs that 
are connected up in such a way with the mechanics of 
the target that a small pointer registers a hit on the 
target when you pull the trigger. This is good prac- 



TRIGGER RELEASE 77 

tice for the trigger finger muscles and each shot is 
scored instead of being guessed at. 

When the rookie is making possibles on it every 
other string, he thinks he is a sharpshooter, but a 
trial out on the ranges with real ammunition and real 
wind will show him that he has only trained his trigger 
finger and is only a mediocre shot after all. But this 
training must be gone through with to get even to 
that stage, and I would consider not less than fifteen 
minutes a day as necessary during the month of Au- 
gust for every one who expects to hunt big game in 
the Fall. The same thing with the revolver, for it 
is the handiest thing ever for small meat-in-the-pot 
along your big-game trail, especially in the West, 
where one is on horseback a good deal of the time. 

For shotgun, I do not believe that any one can be- 
come a really consistent shot without a great deal of 
practice in gun swing and trigger release. A good 
deal can be done swinging on a small bird or mark 
in your room, but what counts is work at the traps. 
For most of us it is not until several thousand shells 
have been fired at one shoot or another that one gets 
that fine timing of swing and release that gets 
bird after bird until your total runs from twenty- 
one up to twenty-five straight. I have not reached 
the latter yet, but manage to land somewhere between 
twenty and twenty-three with considerable regularity 
— on calm days. On windy ones, only the cracks can 
connect with any consistency, and I've seen a lot of 
them drop down in the eighteens when the breeze was 
hopping the saucers about so they weren't there when 
your shot got out there. 



78 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

In conclusion, let me urge the tyro to pick out a 
good medium pull and not change it until he has a 
lot of experience. There are thousands of gun cranks 
who pick a gun to pieces the moment it gets from the 
factory — but not you ! The men who made these guns 
have been at it for some time, and they know from 
long experience just what is best in the long run for 
all the conditions that you and your gun may have 
to face. So don't rush in and change everything for 
some fancied advantage until you are sure that the 
advantage will outweigh the disadvantages that may 
come up under other conditions. Experience will tell. 



CHAPTER VI 

RIFLE TARGETS 

Autumn is the time you begin to reach for the 
good old double shotgun, your pet rifle, or both. You 
find to your horror that the beloved rifle is more rusty 
than trusty and that there's actually a speck of dirt 
— several of them — in the barrels of the 12-gauge. 
Then comes the Annual Overhauling with screw- 
driver, kerosene, hot water, nitrosolvent and gun 
grease. After which, the irresistible longing to shoot. 
The fisherman has had his day and is gone, — it's your 
turn now. It is yet thirty days to the Hunting Moon, 
but a few practice "aims" set you breathing hard and 
you realise that the particular muscles that hold a 
gun are flabby and soft. And right here is where the 
little 3 5- foot cellar range comes to the rescue. After 
you have fired not one hundred and fifty, but five hun- 
dred and fifty shots in the cellar range, often in strings 
of fifty, your holding muscles are hard and steady, 
the piece lays to the shoulder in good alignment and 
all there is left to do it to choose how much sight you 
are to take, swing into the bull's eye and fire. 

I do not advise the inevitable .22 for this sort of 
practice. It is too light and too different from your 
regular hunting rifle. If the latter is a large high- 
power, use a sub-calibre steel supplementary cartridge 

79 



80 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS . 

adapted for .32 c. f., or better still, own a .32-20 or 
.32-40 low-power repeater such as was in universal 
use and good enough for everybody in the '90's. Per- 
sonally I believe that, except for moose, caribou and 
Rocky Mountain big game, either the .32-40 or .32-20 
H. V. sixteen-shot repeater is the safest and best 
rifle for all around Eastern and Central States shoot- 
ing. With its full-power 115-grain bullet it is deadly 
for deer and bear, and from that down through the 
range of .32 cartridges it takes all the smaller game, 
winding up with the .32 short for ducks, grouse and 
squirrels. 

Using the .32 short S. & W. pistol cartridge, 
smokeless, you have an excellent cellar range load. 
Supplemented by a few afternoons outdoors, guessing 
distances at all kinds of marks with, say, three sizes 
of cartridge, you will find that the cellar range puts 
one in surprisingly good form for field work. 

After getting so that you can depend on yourself 
for a 22 or a 23 regularly with the standard pistol 
target, you have got all the benefits possible without 
increasing the range, and it occurred to me to give 
the cellar practice variety and novelty by approximat- 
ing big game conditions as follows: I cut out of a 
magazine small pictures of running antelope and 
mounted them by twos on cardboard. At their size 
of 1^ inches high by 254 inches long they were 
equivalent in the cellar range to the real beast at 250 
yards. Over the sights of the rifle they looked like 
little gray ghosts, and the stunt was to fire five shots 
on three seconds time limit each, heart shot to count 5, 
head shot 4 and body shot 3 ; or 5 for each if intention- 



RIFLE TARGETS 81 

ally aimed. The illustration shows a couple of 2o's 
made under those conditions. 

You may scoff at the 33-foot range, but the Eng- 
lish use 21-foot standard indoor with proportionate 
targets, and don't find it all beer and skittles, at that. 
I append an interesting letter from E. C. Crossman, 
the famous gun authority, on the English indoor prac- 
tice air rifle. It appears to be some gun and well 
worth trying out over here. 

Dear Miller: 

Some class to the targets, sure enough. Betcha the 
N. Y. police don't know about that cellar range. Me, 
I'm classy, I shoot in the parlour, not in the cellar. Got 
an English air rifle, made for target work and of the 
pattern used by over 300,000 riflemen in the right 
little, etc., isle. Weighs 7 pounds; has good walnut 
stock with checked grip, pistol shape, trigger adjus- 
table in pull, barrel .17 calibre and carefully rifled, 
rear peep sight, front tip over, middle sight if desired, 
both adjustable for elevation. Compresses with one 
stroke of lever lying under barrel, will drive bullet 
through y* inch of pine at 50 feet, and will make 
group of Yz inches or less at 75 feet. Cost of bullets, 
12 cents per thousand in England. I've got a bullet 
stop, bought from same country, steel octagonal box 
with four inch opening in which target is set, behind 
this is V-shaped steel blade that deflects bullets to sides 
of box and prevents lead from splattering backward 
or falling out of box. Little noise, no smell, no ex- 
pense. Standard English range 21 feet, targets re- 
duced proportionately from outdoor pattern. 



82 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

Target holder hangs on wall and I shoot it from 
my den. Sample bullet is enclosed herewith. Open 
end is toward air, expands and takes rifling. Many- 
neighbors' chickens have left home in A. M. and failed 
to return from regular raid on to my property. On 
dissecting those that have thus failed to return I find 
that the bullet drives clear through the beasts until it 
hits a big bone. As a cat discourager it is fine. It 
is, of course, hard on the cat, but I cannot find any 
sympathy in my heart for the miserable bird-killing 
beasts. 

Did you shoot five shots in three seconds, or one 
shot? Latter is some quick shooting if so, while five 
shots in three seconds with that sort of aim is rather 
unbelievable in this locality. 

Yours very truly, 

Los Angeles, Cal. E. C. Crossman. 

This three-second time limit is a mere pipe. Rob- 
inson, in his article on Aiming, points out that rifle- 
men seldom realise how quick the eye is. Once your 
sight is drawn and you are on the bullet it's time to let 
off, as there is little to be gained by holding longer 
and wabbling about the 5-spot in hopes that you can 
stay there long enough to make a brown-study of it. 
My own practice is to draw my sight in the imme- 
diate neighbourhood of the bull, swing into it and fire 
in that fleeting instant when the bull either sits on 
the sight or is to the right or left of it, depending on 
windage to be allowed. The count of three is ample 
to align the piece, draw the sight and walk into the 
bull. Any longer time is simply doing it over. 



RIFLE TARGETS 83 

To make a cellar range requires no elaborate out- 
lay at all. Simply a wooden box from the grocer's, 
filled with sand, dirt or even stove ashes. Then you 
want a hundred twenty-five-yard standard pistol 
targets with i-inch bull, 3% -inch four-ring and 
5-inch three-ring costing a dollar a hundred. They 
will do to start with, but to be in the right pro- 
portions with outdoor 200-yard targets you should 
get up a target with y 2 -mch bull, i^-inch four-ring 
and 2^2 -inch three-ring. Send this to the nearest job 
printer and he will make a line cut out of it and run 
you off a thousand for a couple of dollars. For out- 
door practice the Standard N. R. A. 200-yard target 
is 8-inch bull, 26-inch four-ring and 46-inch three- 
ring with a field 48 by 72 which counts two. All cel- 
lar range practice should be supplemented whenever 
possible by a day or an afternoon a-field. Dig up out 
of catalogues the trajectory of the various cartridges 
you are using. It is essential to know them approxi- 
mately, for at all close ranges you are apt to over- 
shoot unless you are familiar enough with your 
cartridges to make a fair allowance. 

With point-blank at 100 yards your bullet lifts, 
say, 3 inches at 50 yards, 1% at 25 and 1^2 at 75. 
Raise it a notch to 200 yards point-blank and the lifts 
for the same cartridge will be approximately 6 inches 
at 100 yards, 3 inches at 50 and 3 inches at 150. In 
Chapter XV we have a table of trajectories which you 
will do well to study, and then work them down to 
practice in sight-drawing afield. 

Quite by accident I discovered a means of getting 
a world of fun and good practice in rifle shooting — a 



84 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

running deer target that can be made in half an hour 
and will go a long way toward surprising you out of 
any notion that such an animal is easy to hit. We 
have a running deer at the Camp Fire Club matches 
similar to the animal at Bisley, the Camp Perry 
matches and at Los Angeles. He speeds along at the 
rate of 75 feet in six seconds, and not a few men in 
the club make "possibles" on him, that is five shots 
forward of his centreline. I myself have hit him four 
out of five at 100 yards, which score put me down 
ninth or tenth man, as two of them were haunches 
counting only 7, whereas the brisket shots count 10. 
The speed of the Camp Fire deer is about 8 miles an 
hour, which is what a deer will do through timber 
when not badly frightened, the kind of shot you get 
when "he won't stand still." How fast it really is, you 
do not appreciate until you get at close quarters, but 
it is in any case the real thing for big game rifle shoot- 
ing practice, and many a sportsman on his way to 
the annual deer hunt would give a lot to have a day 
or so at just such a target. 

The deer that figures in these illustrations is pro- 
portioned for reduced ranges, being 20" long from 
nose to tail, 13" from haunch to brisket and 5" 
through the body. He was cut out of brown card- 
board and first used standing, firing at 50 and 75 
yards, only the first shot being allowed on three sec- 
onds' time. All the rest had to be got off just as fast 
as the lever could be worked and a sight taken. Prac- 
tically all the army method, of slow, careful sighting, 
with the front sight travelling around the bull until 
that instant comes when the bull sits squarely over 



RIFLE TARGETS 85 

the sight for an instant and the trigger is squeezed 
off, is worthless in big-game shooting. Its sole use- 
fulness is when you have a long-range shot at an un- 
suspecting animal. After that shot all the rest will 
be fired as quickly as a satisfactory sight can be had, 
for that animal will rarely drop in his tracks; even 
if mortally hit he bounds forward and may run a 
hundred yards unless stopped, and any other hit will 
simply set him and you off on the long wounded-ani- 
mal trail — unless you can knock him down to stay 
before he gets out of sight. Now the eye is quick 
as a flash, and the arm muscles, if well trained, will 
bring the rifle sights into line with the raising of the 
piece; it is only the brain and trigger-finger that are 
slow. If the rifle is not fired the instant the eye sees 
the sights on a vital spot on the animal, a second sight 
must be had, and still another and another until the 
trigger-finger does its duty. Meanwhile the animal 
may move, or, if moving all the time as deer and bear 
are often encountered, there is no time to get any 
sort of a military sight. 

With this deer, a party of four of us that were 
going to Maine and Pennsylvania after deer practised 
with the idea of getting used to dull brown targets, 
the shape and vital parts of a deer, where to put the 
bead quickly where it would do the most good, and 
how to work the magazine quickly and smoothly, a 
feature that many big-game hunters overlook until 
the time comes when they want that whole magazine 
as quickly as it can be fired. 

One man brought a .30-40 box magazine carbine ; 
the second a .30-30 tubular magazine ; the third a dou- 



86 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

ble gun, one barrel a sixteen gauge and the other a 
.38-55, while I used my old favourite the .32-20 W. 
H. V. In addition to the deer we had a brown fox 
of about actual size, a profile snowshoe hare and a 
profile grouse, both full size and intended to be fodder 
for the supplementary cartridges of these rifles. The 
.30-40 and .30-30 used .32 S. & W. shorts in a steel 
supplementary cartridge, the .38-55 had reduced arm- 
ory cartridges, while I had a pocketful of .32 S. & W.'s 
which can be shot direct in- the chamber of the .32-20 
without any supplementary cartridge at all. The deer 
was tried first at 50 yards and then 75, five shots being 
fired in a string, the first being a three-second aim 
and the rest as fast as the magazine could be worked. 
The honours were carried off by the .30-30 and .32-20, 
my own gun landing four out of five of the 50-yard 
and all five at the 75-yard range, principally because 
she was completely sighted in, had a receiver peep 
with large aperture, and I knew her of old. The other 
men were still in the stage of getting acquainted with 
their new rifles, the .30-40 man having just bought 
his and putting most of his shots high, and the .38-55 
landing nearly 8 inches above the deer until he had 
had a short but earnest session with his sights. After 
that things were smoothly enough, though I do not re- 
member a single magazine ful that went off absolutely 
without jamming. This was due, for my gun, to dirty 
and unoiled magazine action, a part often neglected in 
favour of the bore, and on the larger guns often to 
not throwing down the lever full length. Working the 
magazine is just as much a practical part of rifle shoot- 
ing in the woods as firing the gun — yet how many 



RIFLE TARGETS 87 

sportsmen spend any time at all running through a 
few magazinefuls until they get the hang of it! 

But both the deer and the fox were rather dis- 
appointing. They were too easy; they did not run 
the way game does, hit or not. The score stood for 
the deer : .32-20, nine shots ; .30-30, six shots ; .30-40, 
four shots; .38-55, none. On the fox at fifty yards 
everybody was in with from two to four shots apiece ; 
the grouse had his neck cut off by all the supplemen- 
taries at thirty yards, and the rabbit was all shot up 
at forty — there remained no more worlds to conquer. 
Then the Big Idea hit me ; why not rig up a pendulum 
deer? 

I tried it out next day at home. I had a 14- ft. 
strip of two-inch white pine moulding, and to this the 
deer was tacked with a thin cross piece behind him to 
keep him from twisting under air currents. At the 
upper end of this pendulum went a wire nail driven 
into a broom-stick handle, which latter was nailed to 
a tree some sixteen feet above the ground, bringing 
the deer's back 2 ft. 10 in. above the forest floor. 
Next, a file weighing about 1^ lbs. was secured in 
behind the strip of pine for a weight, and the deer 
was ready after not over half an hour's fixing up. 
His first big swing was 18 feet and he did it in two 
seconds as timed by a stop watch. Going 18 feet a 
second in mid-swing he was some hard to hit, and 
gee! but that was an exhilarating sport! It had all 
the joyous fascination of wing-shooting, and it was 
the nearest thing to real big-game shooting, particu- 
larly Virginia deer, that I have ever experienced. The 
Kid and I took to it with real enthusiasm and estab- 



88 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

lished a score of two hits each out of five for a starter. 
As the shooting was done inside of city limits we used 
a hard-hitting, accurate air rifle, and reduced the 
range to 25 yards. The rules were that each swing 
counted a shot whether you shot or not. During the 
back swing you had to work the magazine action and 
catch your sights; no shots were permitted except at 
the centre of the swing when his speed was about 
eighteen feet a second, for of course a pendulum slows 
up at either end and its total swing was only two 
seconds for the eighteen feet of travel. Fun ! Lord, 
it was equal to wing shooting! We soon learnt that 
one has little time for fine sighting. You could not 
see the deer at all at the two ends of his swing; you 
caught a sight of him coming full speed through the 
bushes, picked him up and led him from a foot to 
eighteen inches ahead of the brisket, and whaled it to 
him ! It took a long time to realise that you must lead 
a running animal a good deal. Eighteen feet a second 
is about 12 miles an hour, even that not half the speed 
of a badly frightened or hit deer, and the time it took 
the air rifle bullet to reach him was just about the 
time a high-power bullet would travel 100 yards, call- 
ing for an apparent lead, then, of not less than a foot, 
and better two feet. 

At first we held just ahead of the brisket, with the 
result of haunch shots when they hit at all. The 
tendency to overshoot was also just as marked as it 
is with real game running, and the pendulum itself 
soon accumulated a number of shots in its shank above 
the deer, showing where many of the shots were go- 
ing. Gradually we crept up to three out of five hits on 



RIFLE TARGETS 89 

the best strings, and finally I got his number and 
plunked him four times in four shots, the fifth being 
a blank. It did not do to hold somewhere ahead of 
him and let off when he approached the spot within a 
foot or two. You were sure that these were going 
to register a hit, but they didn't ! But when you picked 
him up coming along full speed, swung along and 
ahead of him nearly eighteen inches- — and were sure 
that you did it — you heard a satisfactory plunk, and 
later found the bullet hole in the brisket. My best 
score was 34; two haunch shots and two briskets (14 
and 20), curiously enough the identical score that I 
made on the Camp Fire deer in 191 5, running at 100 
yards, the rifle being a .35 Winchester. 

Another thing: it took some practice to get your 
trigger-finger to let off promptly at command from 
the brain. Time and again your brain would say 
"Now!" in the rush of aiming and firing at that fly- 
ing beast, and you could actually see yourself missing, 
the rifle still swinging ahead but the trigger letting 
off an infinitesimal fraction too late. Your brain, act- 
ing still quicker, would see that it was going to be a 
miss and was already forming an appropriate and 
forceful Damn! which would be out of your system 
before the rifle bullet would be heard zipping through 
the underbrush. 

You may fondly imagine that you are going to hit 
that deer this fall, no matter if he goes past you 
through the woods on the dead gallop. This confi- 
dence is fostered by memories of scores that cause 
you to know you can depend upon yourself to make 
good at standing targets, however dim and ghostly 



90 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

they may be. But if you want to know just how much 
you have yet to teach yourself on running targets, 
make one of these pendulum deer, like the one in this 
photo, get off 75 yards so that the time element enters 
into your shooting, and have at him with your hunting 
rifle! He swings about eight times before he slows 
down enough to require starting up again. It will 
not be that easy cinch that you had with those running 
deer and rabbits in the shooting gallery at 20 yards — 
not at all, Gertrude! And it's fun; it's the best fun 
with a rifle that you ever had! 

Rifle practice with a big game rifle has or should 
have one golden rule guiding it — the good old rule, 
"a miss is as good as a mile." Many a hunter has 
spent nights sleepless with chagrin over a mortifying 
miss which may have been but an inch over the ani- 
mal's back, may have cut a furrow through the very 
hair of your deer, in fact — but you would never know 
it. All those close fours and other well-placed shots 
which made such a satisfactory group around the bull 
and showed up so well on the score card — where 
would you be if they were swept into the discard with 
the twos and complete misses and only your bull's-eyes 
counted ? That is the trouble with the target : it tends 
to complacency with close misses and leads away from 
the accurate holding that gets meat. That, and the 
visual perfection of its arrangement of black bull's- 
eye on white paper ground. 

Still another fault of the target is its unresponsive- 
ness to a hit. We like to see something happen when 
our rifle bullet lands. The shattering of the clay at the 
report of the gun is the satisfying and instant reward 



RIFLE TARGETS 91 

that the trapshooter gets for good holding, but unless 
you have a telescope you know nothing of your per- 
formance on the rifle target until you have shot a 
string, walked several hundred yards, and then you 
have, perhaps, a faint glow of satisfaction, but noth- 
ing like the thrill you get at even a shiny globule float- 
ing on a water jet which you smash in the ten-cent 
gallery. 

I wanted a target that would wigwag a hit to me 
and calmly ignore my misses, however close — a come- 
again target, so to speak, that would invite more shoot- 
ing and register a hit or miss either rapid fire or slow 
fire, running, standing, prone or kneeling shot, from 
any angle and seen through the brush in the woods. 
Something that you could knock over with a rifle 
shot and that would pick itself up again. The illus- 
tration tells how the thing was cobbled up. I set 8 
inches by 12 as the size of the target and brown as 
the color. To make it I used some hard pine % in. 
by 8 in., stock dressed both sides, and an ordinary 
cast iron spring door hinge bought at any hardware 
store for 10 cents. The lower part of the target was 
shaped with the compass saw to something like an 
inverted spade and the point sharpened so that it could 
be shoved down into the forest duff at the chosen site, 
the idea being to take this target out into the hills with 
you and set it up somewhere on a hillside where you 
had a chance at it from vantage points on the opposite 
ridges, the ranges being from 75 to 200 yards. At 
the top of this spade-shaped piece was screwed the 
hinge, its upper member taking the target itself, which 
was simply a piece of the eight-inch stock cut off 12 



92 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

inches long and reinforced across the back by four 
tough pieces of maple screwed across the back, for 
the splitting action of the bullets would send a plain 
piece of board flying over the landscape at the first 
shot. Whether to add a face plate of thin iron or 
steel is a question. Do not fear any upward glance of. 
the bullet, for the inertia of the plate is so great com- 
pared to that of the bullet that it has passed clear 
through it before the plate begins to fold over back- 
ward, turning on the hinge. The steel or soft iron 
plate helps hold the target together, if reinforced with 
20-oz. iron tacks all over the surface, and does not 
add much to your carrying weight. 

The action of this target is simply to fold back 
when a bullet hits it, the hinge returning it to its 
normal upright position on the edge of the spade- 
shaped piece which is driven into the earth. Simple 
but effective in letting you know instantly whether 
or no you have made a hit, and it is a great target for 
approximating big game conditions, forest shooting, 
poor light for your sights, running at speed before 
firing, dim target and the instant necessity to fire 
again quickly when you see that you have scored a 
miss. 



CHAPTER VII 
Two rifxes for the; poor man 

When I was a boy of twelve I had at last received 
the paternal permission to relinquish the beloved (and 
accurate) Chicago air rifle for a "real" powder gun. 
Within two hours from the removal of the edict 
against powder guns a stamp and coin collection 
had been sold and within two days there had arrived 
by express a certain Belgian muzzle-loading 27-gauge 
single-barrelled shotgun, advertised by a metropolitan 
gun house at $2.75. I think I spent an entire evening 
just gloating over this marvellous length of gas pipe. 
She fitted me all over, and lock, stock and barrel, and 
a certain juvenile heart went out to her in warm and 
unquestioning admiration. Was she not a "real" gun 
— a death-dealing, really and truly terror to the game ? 
— Pish ! — there was nothing to it ! 

It was a full two weeks, however, before the 
exchequer reported funds enough to buy a box of 
percussion caps, but I had not been idle — far from 
it. Nothing could be too good for the little queen; 
the finest horn had to be found, scraped and drilled 
and bottomed for a powder horn for Her Majesty; 
the finest squirrel skin in the land had to be fashioned 
for a shot-pouch, and nothing would do for the per- 
cussion caps but a snake's tail, said snake to be hunted 

93 



94 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

up, bearded in his den, so to speak, and clubbed to 
a pulp. 

At length the wonderful weapon was taken to the 
woods, where all the delicious details of loading with 
a palmful out of the horn, ramming home paper wads 
with the tiny black ramrod, measuring drop by drop 
the precious lead pellets, and slipping on the copper 
nipple-cap, filled four-feet-six of boy with ineffable de- 
light. Rabbits, squirrels, highholers and meadow- 
larks (the last two now happily under the law) were 
boys' game in those days — and we never went hungry. 
But the sad fact that The Infallible couldn't hit any 
of these creatures came home with something of a 
jolt at the end of the first day's shooting with her. 
She was a nice gun, — and made a fine noise, — and all 
that ; but compared with the accurate and hard-hitting 
little old red air rifle, she wasn't one-two as a game- 
getter. The same victim that was sure eats at the 
end of a successful stalk with the air rifle would fly 
away exasperatingly when the "real" gun was turned 
loose on him. It mattered not that the testimony of 
my own eyes had told me that The Infallible's barrel 
was no straighter than my setter's tail — that was no 
doubt some unexplainable stunt of the gunsmith's 
but that a "real" powder gun should actually miss 
what you aimed at was not to be thought of, — seemed 
incomprehensible, unforgivable. But The Infallible 
— and a shotgun at that — had to give way before the 
efficient red air rifle, for a small boy's stomach simply 
will not tolerate any nonsense about going hungry 
miles from home. 

And then I met up with another youngster who 



TWO RIFLES FOR THE POOR MAN 95 

was weary of life because he owned a .32 calibre 
Warnant action Flobert which cost so much for prac- 
tice ammunition that he couldn't hit anything with 
it. But I had had my practice — lots of it — with the 
red air rifle. Wherefore when I laid that piece and 
found you could smash clam shells into such smither- 
ing showers that none of them were ever found again ; 
paralyse a crow out of a tall old-field pine, and wal- 
lop a hen hawk into the land where all good hen hawks 
go, — all with a completeness that filled to the brim 
one's ideals as to what good gun powder should and 
could do, it was but a short dicker before the Queen 
and the .32 changed hands. He had found his weapon 
and I had found mine! 

And, for everything this side of the high-power 
rifle, my preference has been for the .32 ever since. 
Yet, while there are pages and pages about what a 
good little weapon the .22 caliber is, and columns and 
columns of discussion on which rifle is the best .22 
and which the best cartridge, I have never seen any 
one say a good word in print about the .32, which 
can do all that the .22 can do, and more, oh, so very 
much more! 

But, let me tell you. I am perfectly aware as I 
write this that the new .250 Hi Power, with its 3,000 
feet muzzle velocity, the trajectory of whose bullet 
can be seen, is abroad in the land. But this is not an 
affair of high power rifles, otherwise the .32-40, .32 
special and 7.65 mm. Hi Powers might be dropped into 
the arena. But in the East, where there are five 
hunters in the woods after every deer, and where the 
average shot is not offered at greater range than one 



96 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS , 

hundred yards, one likes to feel that one's bullet is 
going to stop somewhere this side of heaven — say, 
after it has pierced the first six-inch oak in its path 
— and there is really little logic in going into expen- 
sive ammunition and immense power east of the Mis- 
sissippi, until you get up in Canada after moose. 
And in low powers the .32 rifle can cover within the 
compass of one single weapon every cartridge that 
is needed, from squirrels to deer. 

And this statement leads me to the first of the 
Poor Man's Rifles, the .32-20-115 thirteen-shot re- 
peater. I hear an agonized whoop from the .32-40 
and a shrill squeal from the .25-20, both of which 
cartridges are far ahead of the .32-20 in accuracy, — 
at three hundred yards. No marksman would think 
of using the .32-20 when he could possibly lay his 
hands on either of the above cartridges! But, soft! 
We are not talking of marksmen, nor of rifle ranges 
with a mule-load of ammunition apiece, nor yet of 
Schuetzen rifles, with a keg of beer on the side. We 
are speaking, on the contrary, of a rifle for the 
cruiser-camper-tramper of the East, whose game may 
one day be a duck or a wild goose, and the next day 
a deer; the man who wants but one light rifle in his 
layout, and is limited to less than two pounds of 
cartridges for a two weeks' trip. He wants it a re- 
peater because there are always two or more chances 
to the quick aimer ; he wants it lever action, as there 
is no comparison with it for the bolt when it comes 
to speed, and, above all, he wants his ammunition pile 
to look like two small flat boxes of fifty cartridges 
each, and one tall one of fifty — same dimensions — say 



TWO RIFLES FOR THE POOR MAN 97 

2" x 2" x 3)^", And these requirements are met by 
the .32-20, one box of the high-velocity persuasion, 
and two boxes of the .32 S. & W. pistol shorts. Here's 
150 rounds of please-'em-all ammunition, and if you 
should also want to make a scientific collection of rare 
warblers "an' sich," you can add a box of .32-20 shot 
cartridges which will put 37 No. 10 shot in an 18" 
circle at 10 yards. The ordinary .32 short will not 
answer, as its diameter is but .299", while the stand- 
ard bore of the .32-20 rifles is .311", so it will not even 
touch the rifling. But the S. & W. .32 short is .313" 
diameter — two thousandths too large, so that it fits 
the rifling snugly, and you will have no trouble in 
nicking a 12-gauge gunwad with' it at thirty-five 
yards, two times out of five, with the other three hug- 
ging it close. 

I know that the stubby, 115-grain bullet of the 
.32-20 has been tabooed along with other shorties as 
inaccurate by many authorities, but, as a matter of 
woodland, — not rifle-range, accuracy — when you can 
plug an 8-inch bull and three close fours with it off- 
hand with factory sights at 250 yards — your rifle's 
accurate enough in all conscience ! 

Getting down to figures, the .32-20 Winchester 
high-velocity smokeless, suitable for their Model '92 
repeater or equivalent Marlin or Stevens rifle, has a 
muzzle velocity of 1,640 feet a second, strikes a blow 
of 689 foot-pounds, and penetrates 17 pine boards 
with full patch bullet. I am not interested in soft 
wood penetration, but I am glad to have the fact 
tucked away in my memory that its lead bullet mush- 
rooms out to half an inch diameter after smashing 



98 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

through four inches of dry maple across the grain. 
According to the experts the .32-20 has the same 
trajectory as a tennis ball, but as a matter of fact, 
it's "not so worse," rising but two inches in the middle 
of the 100-yard flight and ten inches for the 200-yard 

(.30-3?, sH")> m 

Is this cartridge big enough for deer? No one 
ever questioned the old black powder .32-40 for this 
job, yet it only has a striking energy of 747 foot- 
pounds or 60 more pounds than the .32-20 H. V. 
Men who don't know the .32-20 would be apt to shake 
their heads and venture that it lacks bone-smashing 
power. Let me utter the rank heresy that this bone- 
smashing stunt is mostly bunk — as far as the .32-20 
is concerned. You can fire it at a big bull's rib at 
its thickest part, up where it hooks into the vertebrae, 
and it will tear right through it, smashing things to 
splinters, and continue on to penetrate three inches 
of live oak. This with the soft lead bullet of the re- 
loading tool mould. Take the heaviest bone in the 
animal, the humerus, up near the pelvic joint — the 
way the .32-20 walks through it is a crime. I once 
tried it on a three-inch moose knuckle, the ball joint 
of the humerus. The little bullet landed fairly on 
the knob, penetrated straight through, and lodged an 
inch into an oak against which the bone was placed. 
You could lay your thumb in the hole on the reverse 
side of that bone. Kentucky riflemen who used to 
shoot deer with a pea rifle will tell you that you have 
power enough and more than enough. 

Let's take a trip — in memory's ship — with the .32- 
20. You are on a three-day tramp and deer hunt, with 



TWO RIFLES FOR THE POOR MAN 99 

all you possess in a pack on your back. It is getting* 
late in the day, and, while deer trails are plentiful 
and cheap, the real goods are not yet invoiced. Here's 
a partridge sitting on that tree; bad shotgun range, 
but nuts for a .32 S. & W. short. Grouse or bacon 
for supper? 

If you have a .32-40, it's bacon for yours, as the 
noise she would make would end the deer hunt then 
and there, and its chamber is too large for the S. & 
W. But the little faint penk! of the S. & W. cartridge 
fired from the .32-20 is no great circumstance, so you 
throw down the lever, catch the shell flipped over 
your shoulder and pick out the one in the carrier. Out 
of your pocket comes a .32 short — and into your 
pocket goes a fat grouse! 

Again: You are off for a September canoe trip. 
Shotgun or rifle? Take the .32 and a handful of 
shorts. Your shotgun would be a pound heavier, and 
its shells out of the question. Besides half of your 
chances will be out of its range. And, just for luck, 
slip in a half-dozen high-steam cartridges, in case you 
should stumble on a "varmint." Toward the end of 
the day's paddle you suddenly drop the motive power 
and reach for your rifle, for there is a duck swimming 
in the next bay ahead, and he looks good, though out 
of range of any honest shotgun. At about 100 yards 
you drill him with the .32-20 — do it just as neatly and 
with three-quarters of an inch flatter trajectory than 
the boasted .25-20. And next day, if you run into 
br'er b'ar — you won't be holding a religious meeting 
up a tree, as you certainly would if you were the 
proud owner of the .25-20. 



100 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS .- 

But when you are big game hunting in the Rockies, 
or after either Eastern or Western moose, or in the 
barren grounds for caribou, it's all off for the narrow- 
gauge low-power. You want lots of steam and the 
flattest kind of trajectories. You'll get most of your 
shots across canons with an air-route descent of some 
two thousand feet, and the range three hundred yards 
across. But, as Crossman says, it's a case of mining 
down into your jeans for at least thirty-five pesos for 
your rifle — and to get a Springfield sporter you will 
have to have military relatives to boot. But hereby 
hangs a tale: 

Some time ago the War Department made up its 
mind to have the Army rifle the same length for all 
arms of the service; whereupon a fine lot of Spring- 
field barrels, the finest in the world, were thrown into 
the discard as not conforming to the new regulations. 
Francis Bannerman, the well-known military goods 
dealer, of 501 Broadway, New York, bought up the 
available supply of discarded barrels, thinking they 
might some day come in handy. Having on hand 
about two million 7.65 mm. (30 cal.) Mauser 
cartridges, he bought up a lot of German Mauser rifle 
actions and fitted them to his Springfield barrels. A 
little juggling of the stock and chamber was then 
all that was needed to turn this weapon into a 
"sporter" equal to any of the hi-power bolt-actions 
afloat.* 

The 7.65 mm. cartridge is in appearance very like 
the .30 cal. U. S. Govt, rimless 1906, and shoots the 

* Note. — All these Springfield-Mausers have been bought 
since the European War. 



TWO RIFLES FOR THE POOR MAN 101 

.303 British 215 grain bullet with a load of 23 grains 
of smokeless. It has a neat muzzle velocity of 2,000 
feet a second, and it swats like the hammer of Pabst, 
with an energy of 1,908 foot pounds — within 44 foot 
pounds of that famous Thor person's performance. 

When I heard that Bannerman was selling out this 
lot of Springfield-Mausers for $11.85, I had him send 
me one, as it looked like a good thing for the man who 
can't afford a hi-power in the regular run of trade. 
When one has to choose between new shoes for the 
kids or a new rifle for the old man; or the madam 
wants her winter suit — well, you know how it is, we 
men have got to hang together, or there wouldn't 
be a gun purchased in the country! So I proceeded 
to investigate the bargain in Springfield Sporters be- 
fore they all got away. Gun came to hand in a day 
or so. A peach of a barrel, with twelve dollars' worth 
of adjustable rear sight on it, 2,000 yards' range, a 
little milled wheel to adjust wind-gauge, and a con- 
vertible peep or open U; — peep is on a leaf of the 
U-bar, and comes up with a push of your thumb. 
Army front sight. Mauser action by V. C. Schilling, 
of Suhl, that hot-bed of German gunmakers. A little 
button on the action permits you to take out the en- 
tire bolt and clean it, or use it as a weapon of of- 
fense, or as the buck in a game of draw, if you prefer. 
Safety is "off" to the right, and "on" to the left, so 
that either way it lies low, and you can aim the piece 
for silent practice. Butt is heavy and clumsy, musket 
fashion, but a new rifle heel plate and a spoke-shave 
are now doing wonders for it. Butt has slot in it for 
strap and the forward barrel-clamp has a similar slot, 



102 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

so one is well fixed for a rifle sling — a handy thing in 
a mountain country. The cartridges come in the mili- 
tary clip, and you transfer them to a light pressed steel 
open bottom magazine clip a la Mannlicher. To load 
the rifle you simply push the clip down until it catches. 
I believe that Lieutenant Whelen holds the speed 
record with the Army bolt gun, with five aimed shots 
in 53/2 seconds, while the lever record is 2 4-5 seconds 
(Haines). 

It would, however, be a good stunt if these Mann- 
licher military sporters could have some sort of a 
light spring catch which would hold the clip when the 
last shot is fired. As it is, it drops merrily on the 
ground as you eject the last shell — which would be 
provocative of assorted profanity if the "ground" 
happened to be some wet river, or a crevice in the 
rocks, or that no-man's land under a wind- fall. 

As regards penetration, the records credit this 
cartridge with 56-inch pine boards with full patch 
bullet. Personally I noted that it showed no hesita- 
tion about ambling through eighteen inches of oak 
across the grain. At these high velocities it is ques- 
tionable about how much mushrooming effect the bul- 
let should permit. If it mushrooms too much the 
bullet will not smash bone, as has often been the case 
in moose shooting with small bores. Big game shoot- 
ing with the Springfield and the new Spitzer bullet 
show terrible wounding qualities for the hard bullet 
encountering bone, as its smashing power then be- 
comes enormous. Delivering the whole 1900-ft. 
pounds of energy upon a devoted beast is like drop- 
ping a ton of bricks on it, concentrated at the bullet 



TWO RIFLES FOR THE POOR MAN 103 

point. (And the .32-20 with the 689 foot-pounds is, 
by the same token, equivalent to dropping from a foot 
above him more than a quarter of a ton of scrap- 
iron on a deer's vitals.) 

The best way to test bone-smashing qualities of a 
cartridge is to smash bone with it, so I got me the 
largest bone knuckle I could find; four measured 
inches through. The full patch Mauser bullet was 
turned loose on this cute little toothpick, with the 
result of pulverizing it into five pieces and assorted 
sizes of fine splinters, after which the bullet pierced 
a twelve-inch black gum tree, and is going yet, prob- 
ably. 

As regards accuracy I did not find that any tests 
I could devise amounted to more than corroboration 
of the well-known Springfield barrel grouping of five 
shots in a four-inch circle at 200 yards from muzzle 
rest. I was pleased to note, however, that in field 
work with her out in the hilly pine barrens, a few 
miles back of the Coast, she was very accurate and 
satisfactory at all sorts of ranges and marks. As a 
nail-driver I also tried her on an oak billet offhand, 
shooting first a hole in it and then aiming at the hole 
with sights set at 300 yards, distance being about 20. 
The result was a neat group just above the bullet 
hole that you could completely cover with a ten cent 
piece. Kick was about half that of a 20-bore shot- 
gun. You can reload the Mauser cartridges or get the 
identical cartridges new, American made. Write for 
the 7.65 Mauser rimless to any of the big cartridge 
companies. For a bullet use the Ideal No. 10 reload- 
ing tool, casting the 31 1299 bullet which fits the .303 



104 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

British and the 7.65 mm. Mauser on 23 grains of 
"Lightning" powder. You will need gas-check cup 
bullet bases to prevent fusion and gas-cutting, as 
the powder gases of the hi-veloxes walk right around 
lead grooves and make curious alloys of your rifle 
lands. Gas check cups list at a dollar a thousand, so 
there is no cause for your pocketbook to take fright. 
Mauser shells with the full patch bullet can be had 
from Bannerman for $2.00 a thousand, but if you are 
a mushroomer you can buy them soft nose from our 
own companies for $3.85 a hundred, or else you will 
want to load your own shells. Ordinary lead will not 
do, being too soft, but you can buy hi-power bullet- 
metal alloys from any of the reloading companies, 
and, w r ith a can of smokeless, you can have all the 
cheap shooting you want. Personally I reload my 
.32-2OS with ordinary lead bullets, using a Dupont 
smokeless which has the same bulk measure as black. 

These two Poor Man's rifles weigh nearly the 
same, the .32-20 being about 6% pounds, and the 
Springfield-Mauser J}A pounds, so that practice with 
the one is all to the good when you change over to the 
other. Reloading is not only cheaper, but also — how 
one does love to fuss with anything that can sling a 
bullet! 

A final word, as to putting some "class" into the 
appearance of the Springfield-Mauser. As she comes 
to hand she is almost a musket with a rather clumsy 
butt, excellent for grounding "harmps" on brick pave- 
ments, but broader than the rear-end of a fat bear. 
She also has too much wood for'd to please the eye. 
The front fore-end joint can come ofr" as far back as 



TWO RIFLES FOR THE POOR MAN 105 

the catch for the second barrel strap. The front bar- 
rel strap takes off by unpinning the front sight and 
unscrewing a small woodscrew. The old Springfield 
barrel was double shelled, the outer part that you see 
being a non-conducting heat jacket. Wherefore, when 
you take off the forend cap, you must replace it with 
one which your gunsmith will make and blue for you, 
as it is at this point that the outer and inner barrels 
are joined together by the cap. Thus altered, you get 
the clean Sporter barrel with short fore-end. Then 
get you a case-hardened Swiss rifle butt plate, costing 
$2.80 (the Winchester rifle butt-plate is a good one), 
unscrew the musket butt-plate and get busy with a 
plane and spoke shave. You must also get off a good 
deal of wood along the comb, thereby saving a bruised 
lip. Finish off by checking the tang with a V-groove 
carving chisel, smooth down with fine sand-paper, 
polish and oil. She will look as in the illustration, 
and you will then own a rifle, handsome in appearance, 
splendidly sighted, and having the finest rifle barrel 
in the world. And a $25.00 bill will cover your entire 
two-rifle arsenal from squirrels to deer and from 
deer to dinosaurs. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE .22 RI*%E 

A subscriber, deficient in the saving sense of 
humor, once wrote in to the Editor of Field and 
Stream asking for a definition of the term "Cat Rifle" 
— couldn't find it in his dictionary. By that term he 
of course meant the useful and ubiquitous least-calibre 
rifle, the adorable .22. For all the worfd loves the 
.22. It is the small boy's idol, the fisherman's delight, 
the big-game hunter's f owl-in-pot and the marksman's 
training school. You can shoot it anywhere, in un- 
limited quantities, take it along no matter how light 
the going, and acquire a warm affection for the little 
devil that will accrue with a growing respect for its 
unvarying trueness to the mark and with memories of 
phenomenal shots that you hardly believed her ca- 
pable of. 

Of course, if it was left to the manufacturers to 
select the .22s to be described, they would all want 
to show their repeaters, since gunmakers take even 
more pride in the mechanics of their weapons than in 
their practical utility afield, but I here describe only 
two representative repeaters, the Remington and Mar- 
lin, latest models. The new Savage 10-shot .22 is also 
touched upon because it is the first of the bolt-action 
.22 repeaters, and, with about a pound taken off the 

106 



THE .22 RIFLE 107 

weight of barrel and stock, will have a future before 
it as a member of the Ancient Order of Cat Rifles. 

The first things that the fisherman and hunter de- 
mands from his .22, aside from a reasonable accuracy, 
are lightness and simplicity. Next, he wants some- 
thing that he can clean easily and see that it is clean ; 
an action that can get moderately dirty without jam- 
ming or clogging; something that he can drop over- 
board or leave out in a shower or in the bottom of a 
wet canoe and yet take apart without trouble to get 
at and wipe down each piece so that later it will 
not rust and annoy. 

The cat rifles are all as accurate as you can hold. 
It is more a matter of knowing the zero of your par- 
ticular rifle, for the sights are large and coarse and 
your first experiments had better be with a sand-bag 
rest until you know your rifle's zero and know how to 
lay your sights to it. For instance, after getting fairly 
accurate at the 25-yard target, take some long rifle 
cartridges and try your luck at the 200-yard. My 
word for it, you will find none on the target out of 
your first string, and may have to pick up your zero 
at 100 yards and work back from it to the 200-yard 
target position. The long rifle cartridge has a trajec- 
tory of only 21 inches at 200 yards, so that the front 
sight has to stand up like a factory chimney to give 
the needful elevation. As I said before, the quickest 
way to learn how to hold your .22 for long ranges is 
to work back by 50-yard steps from some familiar 
range, such as the 25 or 50-yard distance. 

None of the cat rifles have, to my mind, the ideal 
open-sight combination, viz., a rear U notch and a 



108 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

square-section frontleaf sight, such as are found on 
the army Springfield. The optics of open rifle sights 
seem to me to figure out as follows : Since the gaze 
of either one or both eyes is focused on the bull's-eye, 
the combination of both rifle sights makes a mechan- 
ical figure, more or less blurred, which you centre 
under the bull. Now, this mechanical figure (bar 
and U, for instance) must also be in correct align- 
ment, and the combination of shapes for front and 
rear sight which shows easiest any deviation from 
true alignment makes the best set of open sights. In 
the bar and U there is plenty of light showing around 
the bar, so that the eye notices at once if the bar is 
not in the centre of the U, even when not in focus, and 
your hands can correct the lay of the rifle while your 
eye is still focused on the bull. 

Winchester and Remington use the silver bead 
front and U rear combination of cat rifle sights, but 
optically it has the disadvantage that the front and 
rear shapes are too similar. The bead fills the U notch 
on fine sights and bead and notch blur on half-sight, 
both because of similarity of shape. The Marlin and 
Savage V rear notch and bead front sight has the 
same objection, particularly on fine sights. The 
Stevens, with a square section bar front sight and 
rear V notch, is easier to shoot. With a rear U notch 
it would be as easy as the army Springfield, where 
the square front sight stands out sharp and clear, 
even with the eye focused on the bull, and the sight 
is exactly the width of an 8-inch bull at 250 yards, 
whereas the ordinary bead sight shows considerably 
larger. Riflemen, in general, are coming to realise 




.22 CAL. RIFLES 

Top to bottom: Winchester, Savage bolt, Stevens, Remington, 

Marlin, Savage slide action. 




"CAT RIFLES" 

Top to bottom: Marlin, Savage, Stevens, Winchester, Quackenbush, Remington. 



THE .22 RIFLE 109 

that the army open sights are the easiest to shoot 
with. Why not put the bar-and-U combination on our 
sporting rifles instead of the bead-and-U, since it 
makes a stronger and cheaper sight ? 

There is a good deal of tendency to overrate the 
capacity of the .22 short, long and long rifle cartridges. 
Even the long rifle has but 45 grains of lead, shoved 
along by 10 grains of powder, which gives it a strik- 
ing energy at the muzzle of but 122 foot pounds, and 
this dwindles to 83 at one hundred yards' distance. 
Compared to the ordinary .32-20 with 689 foot 
pounds, the cat rifle breed certainly lacks the punch 
of the .32 calibre tribe. 

We hear of wonderful scores with the long rifle 
.22. As a matter of fact, if you hold zero on the bull 
at 200 yards, it will land approximately 21 inches be- 
low it, and at 100 yards will drop 5.82 inches. For 
this reason, knowing your zero, you must exercise 
almost as much judgment in drawing your sights at 
long ranges as would an archer shooting rovers. And, 
with a cross wind, the drift is quite as great as the 
drop, so that the field shooting at ranges much over 
100 yards with the .22 is almost guesswork, until you 
get to know your own particular rifle in all winds and 
weathers and acquire somewhat of the automatic 
judgment of the wing shot. 

But at 25, 35 and 50 yards, the .22 is entirely in 
its own sphere. Almost any good holder can wop 
out "possible" after "possible" at 25 yards with any 
of the cat rifles, and 35 and 50 yards simply require 
a little more judgment and experience in drawing your 
sights and allowing for drift. At 35 yards the drop 



110 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

from point-blank is about i^ inches for the .22 short, 
and the drift in a brisk breeze about ^-inch. I give 
herewith sketches showing the zeros of the six cat 
rifles at 30 yards. 

As to loading, the following manoeuvres become 
incumbent upon the would-be cat tickler: Winches- 
ter, bolt ; Rotate bolt, insert cartridge, return bolt and 
lock it. The act of locking does not cock the firing 
pin so that up to that moment the piece is safe. The 
extractor is straight pull, drawing a .22 short case 
entirely from the chamber and the .22 long nearly 
so. It is simple and strong and will not stick or 
freeze fast, and you can always put more steam on 
the bolt handle if the cartridge gets obstinate. 

Remington Repeater : Loads by pulling out brass 
magazine tube and dropping in the cartridges until 
full, when the tube is shoved home and locked. Oper- 
ating slider, loads, cocks and extracts, though the 
first cartridge can be put in by simply pressing the 
magazine tube. The extractor is a straight pull and 
steel hook, throwing out to the side. To empty the 
magazine, pull out tube, when the remaining 
cartridges will run out at the slot. They will not click 
or rattle, however, with the tube pushed in and locked. 
Neither trigger nor hammer will operate unless the 
slider is at full forward position, when it locks the 
recoil-withstanding parts and is safe. 

Marlin : Magazine loads by drawing out tube and 
dropping in the beans. Has safety mechanism, which 
locks all firing parts until the slider is full forward. 
To unload magazine, simply pull out tube and invert 



THE .22 RIFLE 111 

rifle, when all cartridges will drop out. Extractor is 
a steel hook, throwing the case out sidewise. 

Stevens : Simply break gun and pick out cartridge 
case, which is pulled out ^-inch by the extractor. 
Under-lever cinches the barrel tight against breech 
block, taking the strain off the joint. For a small 
boy this little rifle is a favourite weapon because of 
its light weight. 

Savage: Magazine loads by pulling out a rod in 
the butt. Used .22 shorts only, 10 cartridges. Long 
rifle cartridges will not make the turn in the loading 
tube junction with the magazine tube. Having 
dropped in the beans, slide back the rod and secure 
with a half -turn, bringing the catch over the loading 
tube. A carrier in the stock feeds the cartridges one 
by one to the barrel as the bolt is slid back. Bolt 
has a bent handle and turning it down cocks the firing 
pin. Extractor is a top hook on bolt, drawing the 
cases and tossing them out over the breech. It is 
a simple mechanism, not likely to get out of order. 
Cartridges are kept from getting loose by spring feed 
in loading tube. 

The weight and dimensions of these rifles are as 
follows: Winchester .22 bolt: Weight, 4^ pounds 
(a lighter model weighs 3^ pounds) ; length over 
all, 3 feet 1 inch; length, taken down, 24 inches. 
Remington .22 repeater : Weight, 4^ pounds ; length, 
3 feet 2^4 inches; length, taken down, 25^ inches. 
Marlin .22 repeater: Weight, 4 pounds; length, 3 
feet 3^4 inches; length, taken down, 26 inches. 
Stevens-Maynard : Weight, 2^ pounds; length, 2 
feet 8^4 inches ; does not take down. Savage repeater : 



112 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

Weight, 4 pounds; length, 2 feet 11^ inches; length, 
taken down, 23^ inches. 

You will note from the above that any kind of 
repeater will stand you about 4 pounds weight, and 
take two feet length of package, so that any of them 
will go in an ordinary duffle bag with ease. The 
weight is, however, excessive for the trout fisherman 
out on a pack trip where there is lots of manoeuvring 
along rocky stream beds, and for him either the 2^2- 
pound Stevens-Maynard or the 3^ -pound Winchester 
bolt is the weapon. As a second gun for the big-game 
man, I should recommend the repeaters. Most of 
their weight is in the barrel, where it gives the most 
aid in steadiness of holding, and the rapidity of the 
action is almost inconceivable. In the magazine is a 
clean and comfortable way of carrying fifteen or six- 
teen rounds of ammunition, and when you tear loose 
on duck, grouse or small furred game you want to 
be able to keep plugging him again and again until 
he is down to stay. And, for target practice or for 
glass-ball-artist training, the repeater is the only 
weapon. 

To clean : Winchester : Take down ; press on sear 
and extractor and take out bolt, giving you a clear 
view of the rifling. Taking off barrel exposes all 
trigger mechanism. To take apart bolt, drive out 
the guide pin of the firing pin, which will free the 
firing pin and allow you to clean everything but the 
spring, which latter can also be taken out by driving 
out the firing pin head pin. A short and simple tale, 
and the only tool needed is a small nail. 

Remington: Unscrew pin on side of frame (no 



THE .22 RIFLE 113 

tool needed) and pull stock from barrel. With the 
stock comes all the hammer mechanism, which is thus 
exposed for cleaning. Bolt and carrier remain in 
the frame. To get out bolt, press catch pin on slider 
connection, after which the rifling can be seen and 
bolt cleaned. 

Marlin : Take down by unscrewing a pin on side 
of frame, after which the receiver will come in two 
halves, exposing all the mechanism, including the 
hammer, for cleaning. To get out bolt, lift the slider 
connection off its pin, press firing pin releasing the 
bolt, when the rifling becomes visible. 

Savage : Unscrew knurled nut under fore-end and 
take down, exposing trigger mechanism and carrier. 
Press trigger releasing bolt and giving a clear view 
of the rifling. 

Stevens: Tip-up action, so that the rifling is al- 
ways visible upon breaking. Mechanism is easily 
gotten at by unscrewing lever pins. And, while on 
the subject, let me point out that the rounded upper 
corner of your camp axe is an excellent screw-driver, 
one that will unscrew all sizes, big and little. I have 
completely taken apart and cleaned my model '92, 
solid- frame Winchester, using the upper corner of 
my axe only for the screw-driver. 

With my own weapons, just as sent from the fac- 
tory, the trigger pulls stack up as follows : Winches- 
ter bolt single-shot, 6 pounds ; Remington repeater, 7 
pounds ; Marlin repeater, 6 pounds ; Stevens-Maynard 
single-shot, 3 pounds ; Savage bolt repeater, 3 pounds. 
Four pounds is standard for Springfields, Mausers 
and other typical army rifles. Anything over this 



114 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS .- 

makes hard shooting. I give here the hammer pulls 
because the manufacturers do not seem to realise that 
boys are the principal users of the midget rifles, and 
their small fingers are not strong enough to cock the 
firing pins of our bolt .22s without a great deal of 
unnecessary effort and a risk of the nut slipping from 
their grasp and discharging the piece wherever it 
happens to be pointed. While the Savage cocks on 
closing bolt, both it and the Winchester pins require 
12 pounds pull to cock them, and a boy of ten to twelve 
years will writhe and twist in his efforts to get the 
pin back to the sear. With pivoted hammers the 
leverage of the hand comes into play, so that even 
a small boy can cock the Marlin and Stevens easily 
with a hammer pull of 7 and 8 pounds, respectively, 
firing pin. 

The drops for the above cat rifles line up thusly: 
Winchester, 3^2 inches (s}i inches in light model) ; 
Remington, 3 inches; Marlin, 3 inches; Stevens, 2% 
inches ; Savage, 2% inches. Distance trigger to butt : 
Winchester, 13 inches; Remington, 13 inches; Mar- 
lin, 13^ inches; Stevens, 13^ inches; Savage, 12% 
inches. The above measurements will have a good 
deal to do with the selection of a rifle to fit your boy, 
for if the stock is too long he will have to lean back 
to bring the centre of the gravity of the rifle in far 
enough, and too much drop in that position will make 
it difficult for him to catch his sights. Boys of twelve 
to fourteen usually adapt themselves to almost any 
reasonable dimensions. To tell off-hand if the rifle 
fits your boy, let him lay the piece with both eyes 
shut. If the sights are found in reasonable alignment 



THE .22 RIFLE 115 

on opening his eyes, the drop is right. For correct 
stock length, the butt should swing easily over his 
biceps when the rifle is grasped naturally by the tang 
and swung vertically, muzzle up. 

A boy should learn his gun manners very early. 
I do not advocate his being allowed afield with a 
.22, either alone or in company with an older sports- 
man, under twelve years of age, for he is sure to 
stumble and fire his rifle off into the back of your 
neck or take out a piece of your ear if any more 
irresponsible than the average twelve-year-old. But 
for target practice, under the tutelage of an elder, 
nine years of age is none too soon to begin to learn 
to respect the .22 and all its works. 

But to really learn to shoot and hunt, a boy should 
go afield for himself between nine and twelve years, 
and the proper weapon for him is an air rifle. Twenty 
years ago we had just the rifle, a little red affair, ac- 
curate as any smooth bore can be, a nail driver at 
10 yards and a sparrow hitter at 25. It shot the BB 
bullet at a few cents per pound, and a boy could prac- 
tise or shoot afield all day and all the days without his 
pocketbook feeling it. It had a penetration of 3/16 
inch of white pine, and would kill a tough old flicker 
at 20 yards or a squirrel at 10. 

Nowadays we have no such rifle. The Red Rifle 
was driven out of the field by a lot of gaudy, nickel- 
plated, tin imitations of "real" guns that never shoot 
twice in the same spot, have fixed sights and the un- 
believable trigger pull of 21 pounds. Naturally our 
boys had no chance to become marksmen with such 
toys, nor did those who were raised in cities care much, 



116 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS .- 

as they used the tin air rifle principally to play Indian 
with. But the country boy, who begins his real shoot- 
ing early, mourns the departed Red Rifle. Its best 
substitute is the $3.00 pump action repeating air rifle, 
50-shot, by the Daisy people, a hard hitting and ac- 
curate air rifle. There remain the high-priced Quack- 
enbush air rifles. The Quackenbush illustrated weighs 
2^/2 pounds, is 2 feet 11 inches long, does not take 
down, and has a drop of 3% inches and length of pull 
of 13% inches. It is accurate and effective up to 
about 25 yards, shooting .21 felt slugs at 10 cents a 
box of 100 (expensive ammunition for a juvenile), 
with a penetration of about %. inch of white pine. 
Using steel darts which can be pulled out of a board 
target and used over again ad lib is the cheapest prac- 
tice scheme. The sights are a taper pin front and V 
rear notch, and the trigger pull is adjustable to any- 
thing from 2 pounds up, though best set at 3^2 pounds. 



CHAPTER IX 

TH£ U. S. MILITARY RIFL3 

Th£ Springfield, officially known as the United 
States Rifle, Calibre .30, Model 1903, is the Service 
arm of our Army, Navy and Marine Corps. It has 
displaced the Krag, formerly used in the Army, and 
the Lee .256, formerly the Navy standard. It is ac- 
knowledged to be the best military rifle in the world, 
for it far exceeds all others in utility as a soldier's 
weapon, and in kitting power its '06 exceeds all the 
earlier cartridges. The old Krag was a rim fire 
cartridge, the popular big game .30-40, with a rimmed 
shell or case, and its magazine fed sideways, making 
a rather wide and clumsy receiver 'and stock there- 
for. The Krag or "Army," as it is called in the 
trajectory tables, has a 220-grain bullet, of the usual 
blunt-nosed big-game shape, propelled at 1997 ft. 
muzzle velocity, and it develops an energy of 1949 
ft. lbs. Its midrange trajectory height for the 200- 
yard range is 5.48 inches. The Lee 6 mm. or .256 
cal. Navy was a better rifle as regards muzzle velocity, 
having 2562 ft. sees, and it was intended to kill at 
long ranges with considerable penetration of light 
warship armor, such as the plating of lookout tops, 
etc., but its muzzle energy was but 1632 ft. lbs. owing 
to the light 112-grain bullet. Both weapons went 

117 



118 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS . 

into the discard in due course of time, though both 
were the standard during the Spanish War. With 
the 1903 Springfield came the Govt. 1903 cartridge 
to match, a 220-grain bullet driven at 2204 ft. sees, 
and developing 2374 ft. lbs. muzzle energy. This was 
unsatisfactory because it still had the fault of a high 
trajectory, 4.52 midrange at 200 yards, and 11.40 in. 
midrange at 300, so the Army went at it again, add- 
ing more powder to the charge and lightening the bul- 
let to 150 grains, besides making the all-important 
change to the spitzer point which reduced the losses 
due to air resistance. This gave us the famous Govt. 
'06 cartridge, with the enormous muzzle velocity of 
2700 ft. sees., and, since the energy of the bullet in- 
creases as the square of the velocity, the muzzle 
energy of 2426 ft. lbs. It also lightened the cartridge 
so that a bandolier of sixty rounds of ball cartridge 
weighs but 3.88 lbs. It made an ideal military car- 
tridge, for, with the high velocity, the trajectory 
height dropped to 2.95 in midrange at 200 yards and 
7.50 midrange at 300. 

Big game hunters were quick to realise the value 
of this cartridge. It was found that the splitting 
effect of the spitzer point, backed by the high velocity, 
gave great shocking power even on tough African big 
game ; that, while the earlier military cartridges were 
mere puncturers, like many of those now used in the 
present European War, the Springfield was a killer. 
The 150-grain bullet was, however, a trifle light for 
such game as moose, elk and grizzly, and so two more 
Govt. '06 cartridges were gotten out by the ammuni- 
tion companies for use in regular big game rifles. 



THE U. S. MILITARY RIFLE 119 

These had 180 and 190-grain bullets, and the former 
developed 2517 ft. lbs. muzzle energy, or almost as 
much as the .35 and .405 Winchesters. At the same 
time the trajectory only rose to 3.29 and 8.22 inches 
midrange height over 200 and 300 yards respectively, 
so the chances of over-shooting were reduced to a 
minimum. The cartridge then became very popular, 
and most modern big game rifles are made to handle it. 

But, for military purposes, we have to deal with 
the bolt action repeating rifle as the best suited to 
battle conditions, and, as the Springfield is the best 
of all the type, we will describe it in detail. In a bolt 
rifle you want something fool proof, easily cleaned, 
and not capable of too rapid fire. The game is Man, 
easily killed if hit with but a single shot, and not try- 
ing to get away at express speed, nor inclined to strug- 
gle on if once hit. With a major big game animal 
you want your shots quick and plenty, so as to knock 
him down and keep him down. With Man collected 
into armies you want fire distribution and fire con- 
trol in platoon units ; you must have a light cartridge 
that can be carried in quantities to the battle field 
and on the march without fatigue, and you must have 
a rifle that will fire them accurately without jamming 
or clogging in the excitement of charge and hand- 
to-hand combat, and one that will not easily get out 
of order. As to weight, the rifle must weigh enough 
to take up the free recoil of the cartridge without dis- 
tress and yet not be too heavy to carry on march, 
and this is done at about 9 lbs. for our service weapon, 
a trifle heavy for a big game ideal. 

The Springfield meets all these conditions admir- 



120 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

ably. You have a 24-inch barrel, perfectly rifled with 
four grooves, .004 inch deep, one turn in ten inches. 
This barrel is secured by a threaded tenon into a steel 
receiver which is channelled to take the firing bolt, 
provided with two cammed locking recesses in the 
barrel breech, a safety shoulder against which a third 
locking lug on the bolt takes its bearing, and on which 
also are mounted the safety and magazine cut-off de- 
vices, and in the bottom of this receiver is a long 
slot, called the magazine well, up through which the 
cartridges are fed. For rapidity of loading, mili- 
tary cartridges are furnished in brass clips of five 
each, two clips to each pocket of the ammunition ban- 
dolier carried by the soldier over his shoulder. To 
load, the bolt is drawn back and a clip pressed down 
on the follower plate of the magazine by the right 
thumb. The cartridges slide out of the clip and ar- 
range themselves in a double row in the magazine, 
three cartridges on the right and two on the left, in- 
stead of one below the other as in box magazine big 
game rifles. Closing the bolt casts away the clip, 
and rotating it by the knob handle cocks the firing 
pin, when drawing it back permits the first of the 
cartridges in the magazine to come up under the ex- 
tractor hook on the bolt. It is then shoved forward 
into the chamber by closing the bolt, and rotating its 
knob downwards brings the sear notch into operative 
position with respect to sear and trigger. Pulling the 
latter draws down the sear notch, releasing the fir- 
ing pin and striker which is attached to it, and the 
latter is driven forward by the coiled mainspring on 
the firing pin until it projects out of the bolt and 



THE U. S. MILITARY RIFLE 121 

drives in the primer in the cartridge. Rotating and 
drawing back the bolt not only first starts out the 
empty shell by cam action from the chamber, but 
takes it back and tosses it out of the receiver, leaving 
the space free for the next cartridge, which is prompt- 
ly shoved up out of the magazine, past the guiding 
ramp and up under the extractor hook. Shoving the 
bolt forward and closing the action by rotating it re- 
loads the weapon, and so on, until the five cartridges 
are gone, when it can be very quickly reloaded by push- 
ing in another clip. The record speed with the bolt 
action, so far as I am aware, is five aimed shots in 
5^2 seconds; that of the lever, five aimed shots in 
2 4/5 seconds. One would say that the modern box 
magazine lever rifles have all the advantages of con- 
tinuous fire with clip cartridges plus the double speed 
of rapid fire, if necessary, but in military affairs it 
has been found needful to limit the speed of fire to 
10 shots a minute for 200 to 400 yards firing, 7.50 
for 500 to 700 yards, and 5 shots, 800 to 1,000, all 
of which are well within the capacity of the bolt 
action. 

A diagram of the Springfield action, in position 
to fire, is given herewith. Note the position of the 
striker, drawn back in the bolt; the bolt lugs, locked 
in their recesses in the receiver ; the short safety lug, 
backed solidly against the safety shoulder on the re- 
ceiver frame; the sear notch of the firing pin engag- 
ing the sear ; and, note also that the trigger is pinned 
to the sear, with its upper bearing surface touching 
the solid metal of the receiver bottom. It is obvious 
that if you pull the trigger this bearing will push 



122 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

against the solid frame of the receiver, and there 
will be no other thing for the sear to do but swing 
downwards about its own pin, thus releasing the sear 
notch. This will give a smooth, easy trigger action, 
but one with a creep, which is present in nearly all 
military rifles, that is, the sear has to move an ap- 
preciable distance before releasing the notch instead 
of being pulled directly out of the notch as with most 
hammer-and-trigger mechanisms. This is a point 
of great moment with big game hunters, and it has 
led to the essential difference between big game shoot- 
ing training and military shooting training. For with 
the hunter's trigger release instantaneous, the train- 
ing must be in prompt trigger release, in exact co- 
ordination with the eye aiming through the sights, 
the instant the latter swing on the mark, while in 
military training the sights are to be held on the mark 
while the trigger is squeezed off, and the trigger 
mechanism is designed to meet this style of shooting. 
It is all set forth at length in the "Small Arms 
Firing Manual" issued by the War Department, a 
book of some 250 pages, written partly by my friend, 
Lieut, (now Captain) Townsend Whelen, U. S. A. To 
make good shots out of the greatest number of aver- 
age recruits with the least expenditure of time and 
ammunition is the aim of this manual. The course 
begins with aiming and position drills with the rifle 
empty. These train the recruit in the proper tech- 
nique of sighting and holding in the various positions 
of standing, kneeling, prone and sitting, in each of 
which he goes through a long course of sighting and 
squeezing off the trigger properly under competent 



THE U. S. MILITARY RIFLE 123 

instructors, so that before a single cartridge has been 
expended the novice has no faults to unlearn, and the 
holding and trigger muscles are properly hardened 
and brought into co-ordination with the eye. For a 
beginner in big game shooting with his new rifle, such 
practice is also invaluable, in fact, I never omit hold- 
ing drills all through the closed season; a few min- 
utes nightly keeps the muscles in trim. One gets so 
used to "calling the shot," that is, noting just where 
the sights were when the hammer came down, that 
the bullet hole in corroboration is hardly necessary. 

The Army course follows with gallery practice at 
50 and 75 yards, kneeling, standing, prone and sitting. 
The loads used are generally the armory charges of 
about 15 grains of powder, reloaded in used cases, 
and are entirely accurate at indoor armory ranges. 
This is followed with windage and elevation drills 
with empty rifle, the corrections for the service rifle 
being 3 points on the gauge windage to move the 
point of striking one foot at 100 yards, 1.5 points at 
200, 1 point at 300, etc. Then, for elevation the cor- 
rection necessary to raise the point of striking one 
foot is 485 yards at the hundred yard range, 185 yards 
at 200, 105 at 300, 70 at 400, 48 at 500, etc. The 
rear sight of the Springfield is a "leaf" or ladder with 
graduations from 100 to 2800 yards and it has both 
U and peep sight holes in a movable bar on the lad- 
der. When the leaf is flat a third U is exposed, on 
the edge of the sliding bar, which is now lying flat 
on the sight base. This third U is called the "battle" 
sight, because the trajectory of the Springfield is 
so flat that, at all skirmish and open battle ranges 



124 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

around 200 to 500 yards, any enemy target is within 
the danger zone of the bullet's flight. The front sight 
is fixed and immovable, being pinned to a collar 
swaged to the barrel. The front leaf itself can be 
taken out by driving out the pin in case of breakage, 
and, on the march, is protected by a spring steel sight 
guard. The rear edge of this front sight is a vertical 
black face, making an ideal combination with the black 
rear U when held on a white target paper with the 
bull's-eye just centred above the top of the sight and 
a thin white line showing between it and the bottom 
of the bull ; but, for big game, I find a good modifica- 
tion to consist in filing a 45 degree flat across the sharp 
nose of the sight top, this bright "mirror," as it were, 
reflecting the skylight into the shooter's eyes. This 
gives a bright square bead which can be seen against 
dark and grey objects in all lights, and is visible 
earlier in the morning and later at night than any 
other sight. And, unlike beads, it does not shoot away 
from the light. 

The recruit is then introduced to the open range 
and to full service charges. If his scores show he 
has not profited by his holding and aiming practice, 
back he goes to that kind of drill again. But, as a 
rule, he shows good proficiency, and the gallery prac- 
tice has helped some, though open air conditions are 
quite different. He begins at the 200-yard range, and 
shoots in all four positions until he qualifies in the 
lowest grade in "known distance practice," as shoot- 
ing at known ranges is called. All officers and men 
must qualify on this course, of all branches of the 
service. The methods of aiming and firing are uni- 



THE U. S. MILITARY RIFLE 125 

form; first, a comfortable stance is taken in the pre- 
scribed position (which we give in detail later), varied 
slightly to suit the individual peculiarities of the 
soldier; next, a full breath or several of them are 
taken to quiet down the heart action of the body and 
reduce the later respiration ; then a full breath, which 
is partly expelled, and the rifle is raised into the mark. 
After a short hold, when the sight should come to 
rest under or near the bull, the squeezing process be- 
gins, and, when the sear is about to release, the sights 
are steadied as much as possible immediately under 
the bull's-eye, and the firing pin is "wished off." 

Next come estimating distances, for objects seem 
nearer when seen in a bright light; in contrasting 
colours; when looking over uniform colours of terrain 
as water, snow, wheat, etc. ; and when looking from a 
height downward; and they seem more distant when 
looking over a depression in the ground; in a fog or 
poor light ; when only a part of the object can be seen ; 
and when looking upward at the object. The soldier 
is taught to estimate by units of a hundred yards ; by 
estimating half distances and doubling them; and by 
comparison with known parallel distances, such as 
along roads, etc. Also by trial volleys and by noting 
the speed of travel of sound, as the report of an 
enemy's cannon, measured from the flash. All this 
leads to further qualification at long ranges, in addi- 
tion to which the factors of wind, temperature and 
mirage, which do not enter into 200 to 500 yard work, 
are studied. The wind gauge is graduated in points 
which will move the bullet about 4 inches per point 
at 100 yards, 8 in. at 200, 24 at 600, etc. The rule 



126 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

is Range times Velocity divided by 10 equals quarter- 
points to be moved : — 800 yds. x 5-mile wind divided 
by 10 gives 4 quarter-points, or one point to move the 
wind gauge. The direction of the wind is reckoned in 
hours of the clock; III and IX o'clock being across 
your face, agreeing with the formula ; and I, V, VII 
and XI being about 45 degrees across your face, with 
a windage of one-half the results given by the 
formula. 

A rise in temperature causes the bullet to strike 
high; a decrease vice versa, due to change of density 
of the air and consequent alteration of the air re- 
sistance and trajectory of bullet. Mirage is due to 
heat waves, easily seen through the rifle telescope in 
bright sunlight. They show the direction and speed 
of the wind, and the waves go straight up or "boil" 
in a calm. When there is a wind blowing do not fire 
in a "boil," for there is certain to be a drift and you 
will land off the bull. 

Army rapid fire, equivalent to the hunter's run- 
ning shooting, is done by a rapid squeeze of the trig- 
ger, as no quicker release can be obtained due to the 
construction of the sear. The rifle is not taken down 
between shots, but held to shoulder with the left hand 
while the right manipulates the bolt. The idea in- 
culcated is to catch the aim quickly and hold it while 
squeezing as rapidly as possible. Obviously no such 
perfection can be attained as with the hunting rifle, 
but very good rapid fire scores are made both in the 
Army and Guard. Ten seconds per shot is "rapid 
fire" in military usage, while in hunting two seconds 
is ample, and three seldom used. During the last 



UNITED STATES ARMY TARGETS USED BY RIFLE CLUBS AND THE ORGANIZED MILITIA 
Target A Target B Target D 





53 









, 3 








"^ A ^**N. 




2 


a 


9 


2 




i *.- 


^rr$ 1 














Target A. For Slow Fire at 200 and 300 yds 



Target C. For Slow Fire at 800 and 1000 yds., 
may also be used In Practice with 
Telescope Sights at ranges of 1000 
yards or more 

Target D. For Rapid Fire at 200, 300. and 600 
yards. 



STANDARD MILITARY TARGETS USED BY THE U. S. ARMY, NATIONAL GUARD 
AND NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION 




PLAN FOR AN OUTDOOR RIFLE RANGE 



THE U. S. MILITARY RIFLE 127 

four years of the Camp Fire Club matches with the 
disappearing bear, very few of the 90 contestants 
waited until the three seconds exposure of the bear 
was completed, in most cases the rifle was brought 
to shoulder, the aim taken and the rifle fired in about 
2 seconds, often 1^2, and there are always a lot of 
"possibles" made, with a number of contestants run- 
ning over 40x50. 

Battle fire contemplates not only good grouping 
of the individual shots, but a good dispersion over 
the zone of fire. All rifles put their shots in groups 
around the zero of the rifle, representing the average 
accuracy of the cartridge with perfect holding. This 
group or "cone of fire," as it is called, spreads at longer 
and longer ranges until at modern battle ranges it 
plays an important part in directing the platoon fire 
to cover a given area. If this cone strikes a terrain 
at right angles to the line of fire, like a cliff, the groups 
will be circles ; if the terrain is sloping away from the 
line of fire the cones will be very much elongated and 
the danger zone of the bullet much increased. If, 
on the other hand, they strike a gentle rise sloping 
towards the line of fire the cone is much reduced and 
this is the safest position for a line of battle or line 
of rifle pits to assume. The further instruction of 
the military marksman goes towards utilizing the ef- 
fect of this cone fire to the most advantage. It is 
part of the regular course undertaken by officers and 
platoon fire commanders, and represents the last de- 
velopment of the possibilities of the rifle before one 
gets into the domain of artillery. As it represents bat- 
tle tactics more than rifle technique we have merely 



128 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

mentioned the subject. Those interested in pursuing 
the matter further will find the course laid down in 
full in the "Army Small Arms Manual." 

Getting back to the Springfield itself, a number 
of minor parts should become well familiarised by- 
all citizens who wish to be posted on the use of a 
military rifle. The rear portion of the bolt, called 
the sleeve, is that part of it behind the safety shoul- 
der of the receiver. It is the part carrying the sear 
notch which is moved backwards against the pres- 
sure of the mainspring by the cam of the bolt in the 
action of rotating the bolt and cocking the piece. The 
sleeve is screwed to the bolt and held from unturn- 
ing by a small catch, which you press to release in 
cleaning the bolt. As a good deal of powder grime 
accumulates in the bolt during a lot of firing, it is 
necessary for every recruit to know how to clean 
the bolt. To get the bolt with its sleeve out of the 
receiver the cut-off, as the small catch which regu- 
lates the magazine is called, is placed in centre notch 
and the safety lock turned to a vertical position. 
Raising the bolt handle to vertical position, it can then 
be withdrawn, and we can unscrew the sleeve by re- 
leasing the little sleeve lock mentioned before. The 
sleeve brings out with it the firing pin and striker, 
and to get the latter apart, let down the tension of 
the mainspring by turning the safety lock down to 
the left, press cocking piece against your breast, and 
draw back the firing pin sleeve which will release 
the striker. The parts can then be cleaned and re- 
assembled. To get the extractor off the bolt, turn it 
to the right, forcing its tongue out of the groove and 



THE U. S. MILITARY RIFLE 129 

then force the extractor off the bolt. It is held by 
underlugs on its collar engaging recesses in the ex- 
tractor. To get it on again, turn collar until its lug 
is in line with the safety lug on the bolt, insert the 
collar lugs into their recess in the extractor and force 
it back on again, impressing the hook of the extractor 
against some firm surface. 

A word as to the safety lock and cutoff. The 
former is a winged lug on the sleeve, marked "Safe" 
on one side and "Ready" on the other and its func- 
tion is to lock the firing pin so that it cannot be driven 
against the primer by the mainspring. Under no 
circumstances should the piece be carried loaded, 
with the firing pin let down by gently releasing the 
bolt with trigger drawn. Such a course would lay it 
open to discharge with any heavy jar, for the striker 
would then be in contact with the primer, which it can 
never be if the safety is on. 

The" cutoff is a small locking wing, similar to the 
safety, and marked on opposite sides, "On" and 
"Off." Its function is to put the magazine into ac- 
tion or render the piece single loading. It simply 
stops the bolt from coming back all the way when 
"on," so that the next cartridge in the magazine can- 
not come up under the extractor hook. When in in- 
termediate position the dismounting groove is open 
and the bolt can be pulled out of the rifle. The maga- 
zine has a floor plate hinged to it on the under side 
of the rifle by a tenon which permits it to be opened 
laterally. In the plate is a recess for the heel of the 
magazine spring which feeds the cartridges upward, 
and above the spring is the follower plate on which 



130 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

the lower cartridges rest. When the follower rises 
to the top, it takes a position blocking the bolt when 
the latter is pulled back after the last cartridge has 
been fired, thus telling the soldier that his magazine 
is empty. Many a case of a bewildered recruit work- 
ing his empty magazine in the excitement of battle 
is on record, and this arrangement of the follower 
was designed to prevent such episodes. 

This about completes the description of our U. S. 
Military rifle, except for the sling strap and the butt 
plate. The latter has a covered trap door of steel, 
letting into a recess in the butt containing a wooden 
spare part container, with an extra striker, extractor 
and firing pin for use in campaigning in case these 
parts wear out in the stress of continuous battle. 

A final dismounting required of the recruit is 
that of the magazine. The floor plate is first released 
by pressing on its catch with the bullet end of a 
cartridge through a hole in the plate for the purpose. 
The rear end of the first limb of the magazine spring 
is then raised to clear the recess in the floor plate and 
the same is done to release the follower. Clean and 
replace the reverse of the above, inserting the follower 
and spring into the magazine from below, catching 
the tenon of the floor plate in its recess and then the 
lug in its slot on the guard, when it can be snapped 
home by pressing the rear end of the floor plate for- 
ward and inward. 

The three firing positions of Prone, Standing and 
Kneeling follow. Sitting position is given more lati- 
tude, in general with both heels in the ground, body 
upright, left elbow on left knee, the point of elbow in 




; 



LIEUT. WHELEN IN THE FOUR MILITARY SHOOTING POSITIONS 
Top to bottom: Prone, standing, kneeling-, sitting. 



THE U. S. MILITARY RIFLE 131 

front of knee cap, while right elbow rests inside of 
right knee, the left knee being a trifle in advance of 
the right. 

The Prone Position 

Lie flat at an angle of 45 degrees to the firing line. 
Spread your legs wide apart, toes out and heels in. 
Flatten the middle of the body close to the ground. 
Put the point of your left elbow to the front and 
right. Raise your right shoulder and place your right 
hand on the rifle butt. Put the butt against your 
shoulder. 

Put your cheek hard against the small part of the 
stock with the right thumb along, but not across, the 
stock. Spread your right hand and elbow out as 
far as they will go. Draw your body back, getting 
your chest and whole body as flat as possible. Grip 
the left hand under the rifle as far up as possible. 

Rest your rifle hard in the flat of your hand, not 
on your fingers. The fingers should rest loosely. If 
you hold them tight the trembling will affect your 
shooting. 

The Kneeling Position 

The proper kneeling position seems unnatural at 
first. Your right knee should point directly to the 
right, along the firing line. Rest the point of your 
left elbow over the left knee. There is a flat place 
just on the underside of your elbow which fits an- 
other flat place on your knee, making a solid rest 
for your rifle. Lean forward, holding your rifle much 
the same as when "prone." The illustration shows 



132 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS - 

the correct kneeling position. Study it carefully, 
noticing the points mentioned. 

If possible, get some experienced shooter to show 
you just how to take these positions. Then practise 
until they are natural for you. 

The Standing Position 

The picture below shows the proper standing posi- 
tion. Stand sideways with your right foot at the 
back and turned towards the right. Keep your left 
foot straight and hold your left arm against your 
body, using your body as a rest to support the rifle. 

The better you begin, the better your final results 
will be. Don't let your eagerness to shoot lead you 
to neglect practising the proper shooting positions 
until they become second nature to you. Work at 
them until you take them naturally every time you 
aim a rifle. 

How to Aim 

After practising the position in which you are 
going to shoot until it becomes comfortable and easy, 
you are ready to take up aiming. 

The first thing to remember is to bring your aim 
as quickly as possible upon the target and then imme- 
diately press the trigger with the first joint of the 
finger. 

Do not shoot wildly without stopping to learn 
where each shot hits, because that does not develop 
your marksmanship and makes you only discouraged 
and careless. 



THE U. S. MILITARY RIFLE 133 

After each shot, see where it hit and, if it is not 
a good hit, try to decide why not and what you can 
do to overcome the fault. 

Do not get your eyes too near the rear sight or 
it will become blurred and bad shooting will result. 
Rest your cheek firmly on the butt of the rifle, raising 
the rifle high on the shoulder instead of lowering your 
head to meet the butt. 

Sighting 

Figure i shows how a good aim with an open 
sight looks. The top of the front sight is just below 
the bull's-eye. At the right you will see how the 
bull's-eye would appear if you could look at it through 
the barrel when the sight is in the position shown at 
the left. 

Figure 2 shows how the sight looks when the tip 
seems too low through the notch of an open sight or 
too low through the circle of a peep sight. The re- 
sult is shown in the illustration of the target at the 
right. The shot in both cases goes too low. 

In Figure 3 you will see the result of shooting 
with the front sight too high. The bullet naturally 
goes above the target. If you do not hold the sight 
on the centre of the target the bullet goes to the right 
or left of the bull's-eye as the case may be. Figure 
3 shows how the sights appear under these conditions 
with an open sight, and Figure 3 A shows error of 
the same kind with a peep sight. 

Figure 4 shows the correct method of sighting. 
Always aim just below the centre of your target. This 



134 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS .- 

gives you a clear view of the target above the sight. 
You will have a better chance of seeing how the bul- 
let strikes. You will also avoid the natural tendency 
of a marksman to shoot high when excited. Look 
at the mark and not at the sight. This makes for 
more accurate shooting. One of the most common 
faults in aiming is keeping the eye on the front sight 
instead of on the mark. 

Never tip your rifle to one side or the other. This 
is a fault known in shooting as "canting" the rifle. 
The remaining pictures show the effect of tipping 
your rifle one way or the other. 

Hold your breath while aiming and do not aim 
too long. If you do, you will become unsteady and 
your eyesight will become uncertain. If you do not 
quickly bring your rifle into good aim, take it from 
your shoulder, rest and aim again. Do not look at 
the target any more than is necessary. When not 
aiming, rest your eyes by looking down on the ground. 

Do not yank or pull the trigger. Press it gently. 

The above represents, in condensed form, the army 
requirements in military rifle instruction, and has been 
done into vest pocket booklet form by the U. S. 
Cartridge Co., to whom we are also indebted for the 
diagrams on sighting. While much of it is useless 
in big game shooting, it all forms an excellent ground- 
work, just as a good course in trap-shooting forms a 
groundwork for snapping feathered game in the 
woods. Take this book into the fields with you, and 
go through the three firing positions in person until 
you know them, for mere book instruction is easily 
forgotten, whereas a little actual practice fixes the 



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FAULTS IN SIGHTING AND THE COEEESPONDING HITS ON THE TABGETS 




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WINDAGE, AND CANTED BAEBEL 



COEBECT HOLDING AND EFFECT 
OF CANTED BAEBEL 



THE U. S. MILITARY RIFLE 135 

scheme indelibly in your mind. You will need these 
positions occasionally in big game work, particularly 
in the Rockies for sheep and goat, where open stand- 
ing shots at long range are the rule and you will not 
need the woods aiming ability until he begins to run. 
At the end of the stalk, you are still out of sight and 
unsuspected, and have plenty of time to assume the 
firing position that will insure a hit, and this the mili- 
tary prone or kneeling does for you. Yet, I have 
known many a hunter who never had taken the trou- 
ble to learn these positions and so used ones of his 
own, probably already tried out and discarded by the 
military authorities because of inherent faults — and 
he therefore missed! And the chagrin of missing a 
standing shot, with your guide looking on contemp- 
tuously, is as gall and wormwood compared to a fair 
miss at galloping game in thick timber. 

The military rifle is equipped with a sling strap; 
a healthy, husky affair, long enough to be of use in 
scaling ramparts, and also to act as a steadier of your 
aim. Unlike the plain single sling, slipped under 
your left elbow as described in my chapter on rifle 
sights, this military sling has had a system devised 
for it in the Regulations, which system enables whole' 
flocks of "possibles" to be garnered by its continuous 
use. Unlike my own big game sling hold, in which 
the left elbow is simply dropped through the loop 
and the fore-end grasped with the strap coming down 
across the left-hand side of the left wrist, the sys- 
tem devised by Uncle Sam gives an extra twist to 
the strap where it passes up from the elbow to the 
fore-end, so that it passes the right side of your left 



136 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

wrist instead of the left. Try the two holds with your 
rifle, and you will soon see the difference. Of course 
it is seldom that you have time enough to wind up 
your left arm into the military sling hold, while the 
plain hunter's sling hold is instantaneous, but the 
military scheme does give a trifle more steadiness in 
the prone position. Using either of them in that posi- 
tion, I can lay the sights on a mark apparently much 
smaller than the top of the front sight, and hold them 
there without a tremor for a considerable time. If 
I were shooting a match I would use the military 
sling hold, for that trifle of extra steadiness might 
result in the one extra bull's-eye that wins the match. 
The sling also aids in both kneeling and standing posi- 
tions, particularly the latter, where it compensates for 
the lack of steadiness brought about by modern, short, 
light barrels. Take the old deer rifle of the forties,, 
a marvel of a venison-getter. You plant its heavy bar- 
rel on anything that you can see, and can go away 
and leave it there, so to speak, it lies so steady in your 
hands. Not so the modern light barrel, which soon 
wabbles and dances about any small mark, no matter 
how you hold, and, in a heavy cross wind this tend- 
ency gets so bad as to make you miss a lot. The 
sling corrects this fault, there being practically no 
difference in added steadiness between the military 
hold and the "hunter's hold," as I have dubbed the 
plain loop in distinction to the military double twist. 



CHAPTER X 

KNOW YOUR GUN 

The argument of this chapter is based on the 
much-observed fact that the old-timer, who gets meat 
every time he goes afield, is generally a man of one 
gun — one rifle, one shotgun, one revolver. But he 
knows them ; knows every trick that they possess, and 
knows how to get the most out of each gun of which 
it is capable. Compared to him, the modern "sport," 
with his cabinet crowded with fine guns, none of 
which he really knows anything about, is handicapped 
to such an extent that it is a wonder that he comes 
home with any game at all, not shot by his guide. 
For no two rifles shoot alike nor act alike, and shot- 
guns are even more temperamental, so that a few 
boxes of shells a year expended in practice can 
scarcely suffice to scrape even a bowing acquaintance 
with them, let alone a real familiarity with what the 
weapon is capable of. 

In common with many another sport, I too rejoiced 
in a large cabinet of fine guns. They were great — 
to admire, and take out of the cabinet to show to 
friends — great for almost anything, in fact, but actual 
shooting! For the latter, but two of them could be 
depended upon to bring back the meat — an old Belgian 
double 12 and a Winchester model '92 .32-20 rifle. I 

137 



138 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS .- 

was raised with those two and knew to a dot what 
they could do. For the rest, there were two fine Ger- 
man doubles, a 12 and a 20; a fine choke-bored re- 
peater 12 ga. ; a Mauser bolt rifle 7.65 mm. ; a Stevens 
single-barrelled 12-ga. trap gun; a couple of 22 rifles; 
a 20-ga. single and a 28-ga. Stevens single shotgun. 
Right now the cabinet holds three principal guns, a 
.35-cal. Winchester model '95 rifle, a Parker 12-ga. 
shotgun, and a Colt officers' model .38-cal. revolver. 
To these are added the .32-20 for Eastern deer and 
small furred-game shooting; the Belgian 12, saved 
for the Kid when he gets old enough to shoot it ; and 
the 28 single shotgun, which he is using now. I made 
a clean sweep of all the rest, and am now humbly 
trying to learn all about the three remaining guns 
which I am using constantly. 

Perhaps a brief explanation of the reasons for 
cleaning out the rest may be of interest to shooters, 
after which we can look over some of the progress 
made in knowing the guns that I have settled down 
with for the rest of my shooting days. To begin 
with the bolt rifle. A fine, accurate weapon. Made 
a perfectly rotten score with it the first match I ever 
went into, missing a bear as big as a cow three times 
out of five at 100 yards — a feat that I couldn't dupli- 
cate with the .32-20 with my eyes shut. Front sight 
turned out to be loose, making the rifle shoot two feet 
high and a foot to the right. Sighted her in, and in 
the next match at the same bear tied Jack Hessian on 
a score of 33x50 and won the match against 70 other 
shooters. So far so good. On real game in heavy 
timber she proved far too slow and clumsy to operate, 



KNOW YOUR GUN 139 

besides jamming more than once. How can you jam 
a bolt gun ? Easiest thing in the world ! Just fail to 
drive the bolt home, so that the extractor does not 
catch, run her back until she has a new cartridge out 
of the clip, and you have the prettiest jam in the world 
— one loaded shell in the chamber and another in front 
of your bolt, and mighty easy to get such a one, too, 
in the excitement of reloading a bolt gun with the 
game in plain sight galloping away from you. And 
slow — Lord! So I kissed her good-bye. 

The two Sauer double guns were beauties and 
made like a watch — made so fine, in fact, that the first 
breath of salt air in the locks gummed their safeties 
and it cost three dollars a throw to get them fixed. 
You didn't have to get the guns wet; just take them 
down to Great South Bay or Barnegat and the salt 
wrack would do the rest. Impossible to get at the 
dumned safeties to oil them, too. Moreover, neither 
the 12 nor the 20 fitted me, and I couldn't hit a little 
bit with them. Try as I would, by no possible scheme 
could I drive my trap score above 13 or 14 with the 
12, while with the 20 I did just 3x25 with it the first 
time, and then, after three solid years of practice with 
the 12, I thought of taking the 20 with me on an up- 
land game-shooting trip and gave her another tryout. 
Result — 3x25 ! Try as I would, hold high, hold low, 
shoot fast, shoot slow, she refused to hit the clays. 
Needless to say that gun did not go with me on the 
upland game trip. Finally, after a particularly exas- 
perating day afield with the 12, when I missed seven 
easy chances at quail and missed a rabbit coming 
right at me — both shots — I decided that we must 



140 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

part. It was no fault of the guns ; another man whom 
they fit is making good scores with them now. But 
they didn't fit me and one of our experts at the club, 
a 25-straight man, made just 8 with the 12 the only 
time he tried it. Both of these guns had 3^4 -in. drop 
at the heel and were fitted to me according to the best 
German practice on the subject. I bought a Parker 
that did fit me, and my scores jumped at once to 21 
and 22. 

The Stevens trap single went because I do not care 
to own two guns, one for trap and one for field. One 
gets little enough practice as it is, and that very ex- 
pensive, so that the gun that you must know like an 
open book is your field gun, using its left full choked 
for the traps. Otherwise it was a fine little gun ; made 
a 20 with it ; a trifle muzzle-heavy for me personally, 
but very good for a beginner at trap-shooting who 
takes it up for its own sake rather than as an acces- 
sory to field shooting. The repeater was something 
of a surprise. Three times I had had it out afield, 
always missing abominably with it, until finally, when 
I had scored twelve straight misses on black-bellied 
plover with it, I went back to the old Belgian and 
peace reigned once more. The gun stayed in the 
cabinet for six years, when one day, in a fit of exas- 
peration at making a couple of sevens with the Ger- 
man double, seemingly having dropped back with it 
from n's and 13's instead of making progress, I took 
the repeater down to the gun club. A score of 13x15, 
followed by a 21x25, was tne pleasant surprise that 
this gun gave me. She was specially bored for trap- 
shooting, with an extra-tight choke, as patterns made 



KNOW YOUR GUN 141 

with it subsequently proved. Besides, it fitted me, 
with a drop of 2^2 inches, and it had a light, easy- 
swinging barrel. I sold it only when sure that my 
new double could do quite as well with its left barrel 
as the repeater with its single barrel. 

The single-barrelled 20 was sold because it was 
an abortion as a fit. With a 3^2 -inch rifle stock it 
would fit neither the Kid nor me. It cut up his face 
at the third shot he fired with it, and as far as I was 
concerned I never could hit a pigeon with it, no mat- 
ter how I held. 

The mystery of why the cheap old Belgian of my 
boyhood days was sure to come home with the meat 
soon came out when I patterned it. A mild, open pat- 
tern, very evenly distributed and covering about a 40- 
inch circle at forty yards, explained why, with even in- 
different holding, she would score. At the traps she 
showed up badly with 7x25, but most of the game 
of twenty years ago was shot at around 25 yards, 
which was just about right for the Belgian's pattern. 
The repeater shot so tight that at twenty-five yards 
her whole pattern could come inside a 24-inch circle, 
giving you only 12 inches of leeway for a miss. 

Having boiled my arsenal down to one shotgun, 
one rifle, and one revolver, I called in a priest and 
was married to all three forthwith. My reasons for 
choosing the three brides were all based on practical 
field considerations. I had an individual preference 
for the mechanical construction of the shotgun chosen, 
although any one of the five other best makes of 
American guns would suit me nearly as well, pro- 
vided that they fitted me and were bored so as to 



142 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

give a first-class pattern. Also, for the .35-cal. rifle, 
because of its power and the fact that its supple- 
mentary cartridge takes the .38 short, which also 
fits my revolver. I have seen much big game that 
required a whole lot of killing with the .30 Gov't '06, 
but as a rule one shot from the .35 tells the story, and 
it doesn't make much difference where you place it 
either. As to weight, all modern rifles weigh about 
alike; a half a pound more or less one way or the 
other is inappreciable on the trail; nor is the alleged 
kick noticeable when really firing at big game. Tell 
me the hunter who even remembers whether his rifle 
kicked or not when the moose went down! As a 
matter of fact, twenty shots from the .35 kick one 
about the same as 20 shots with the 12-ga. — which is 
certainly no great matter ! All this talk about a man 
carrying a "cannon" just because he prefers a large 
bore is based more on theory than fact. The .405 
is, in fact, quarter of a pound lighter than the .35, 
because bored out of the same barrel, and both of 
them are but a trifle heavier than the .30; while the 
.44-40, .33, etc., all large-bore rifles, are exceedingly 
light — much lighter than small-bore guns purporting 
to be in every way superior. Give me a good punch, 
and the ability to land that punch, at any range up 
to 300 yards and any speed up to full gallop — and 
you can keep all the other rifle advantages for mili- 
tary range consumption! The real thing to do is 
to know the one rifle that you do settle upon, instead 
of theorizing around with a new rifle every year. 

As for the .38 officers' model revolver, I preferred 
it to anv form of automatic for the reason that the 



KNOW YOUR GUN 143 

revolver is an intensely practical institution with me, 
its value being measured more by its meat-in-the-pot 
producing capacities than by any theoretical quick- 
fire, offensive-defensive qualities. Where can you 
find a revolver that will pick out the bull at fifty to 
one hundred yards or snake a grouse out of a tree 
any more neatly than the .38 officers' model with long 
7^-inch barrel? And, if you get to close quarters 
unexpectedly with a grizzly, you will not make him 
peevish with your revolver fire, as you most certainly 
would with the .32 S.& W., the supplemental cartridge 
for the .30 Gov't '06. On the trail you cannot go loaded 
down, with both revolver and rifle — it just isn't done 
by practical people — since also a belt-axe is essential 
as part of your equipment. But, in the Rockies, one 
shouldn't be without either one or the other weapon, 
no matter what the season. One experience of run- 
ning into a flock of grizzlies when armed with noth- 
ing but a trout-rod, as happened once to a friend of 
mine, will go far towards curing the disarmament 
theory in wild country. And, as the .38 met all the 
above conditions, I chose it for my revolver. 

There was a lot to do with those three weapons 
before the next hunting season set in. I had to get 
acquainted with all three of them, and know what 
they would do in the various propositions supposed 
to be good medicine for various conditions afield. 
The rifle came first. Raw and un-Christian, just as 
she was, with the factory sights on her, I took her 
up to camp and — made three disgraceful scores with 
her: a wild 21x50 offhand on the military target at 
100 yards, an 18 on the disappearing bear, which 



144 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

animal is in sight three seconds at unexpected in- 
tervals, and a 17 on the running deer, which means I 
hit him once in the shoulder and once in the loin, miss- 
ing him three times. Didn't know my gun; didn't 
know a thing about her. Besides, she was smooth and 
unchecked, so that one's sweaty fingers slipped on 
the fore-end and tang; she had no strap; and her 
sights were a joke. 

First, the sights. I wanted a tang peep, not a re- 
ceiver peep, because the latter is so far from your eye 
that in dark or dismal light your eye cannot see 
through it. The folding tang peep, usually sold for 
this model rifle, is so placed by its base on the tang 
as to just avoid the bolt end when the lever throws 
it back. Very nice — for the bolt. But no thought 
seems to have been expended upon the shooter's eye, 
into which the peep is sure to kick and put the optic 
out. Result, the salesman assures you wisely that 
"we do not recommend a tang peep on our model 
'95s," and does his best to sell you a receiver peep. 
But Lieut. Whelen had told me of the tang peep on 
his .405, which he had ferreted out from among the 
sight-makers' products, so I gently but firmly led 
that young salesman down into the cellar and made 
him go over with me their full stock of flexible peeps. 
We found what we wanted ; a peep set well up on the 
tang, the model '94 type, if I remember correctly. 
The salesman shook his head. "Bolt will run into 
it," he declared sagely. "What if it does?" I retorted, 
"that's what the flexible feature is for, man !" So we 
put it on and returned the one usually sold for the 
model '95's. Even at that the .35 kicks back far 



KNOW YOUR GUN 145 

enough to just touch my eyebrow with the rim of the 
peep, and the one sold for that gun would surely 
come back into the eye itself, for it sets fully Y\ inch 
further back on the tang. 

The front sight will do very well as sent from 
the factory. It is a small silver bead, securely set in 
a pyramid front sight. All it wanted was a 45-degree 
flat filed on it with a fine file, so as to throw the sky- 
light back into your eyes at early dawn and dusk and 
also prevent shooting off the light in broad sunlight, 
as the round bead sight is always making you do. 

For the supplementary sights I put on a double 
folding leaf sight with white pearl triangle on one 
leaf and V on the other. Both of these folded flat 
when the rifle was being used with big-game car- 
tridges. For a strap I chose a bronze swivel buckle 
secured to the fore-end by a plate inside the wood, 
into which machine screws lead from the base of the 
buckle. I do not care for a rigid buckle secured by 
a pin and collar to the barrel itself. It is not com- 
fortable nor flexible enough. This rigid buckle will 
answer well enough at the butt end of the strap, 
where no tendency to twist ever comes on the strap, 
but at the shoulder end you want the swivel feature. 
The strap itself was of soft, broad leather, 1^2 inches 
over the shoulder, tapering to J4, in. at the buckles. It 
was just long enough so that one's elbow could be 
slipped into the loop when raising the rifle to fire. I 
find that such a strap is a great aid to steady holding, 
particularly in a cross wind, as it enables you to 
"freeze" your muscles against the tension of the strap 
and the compression of the gun butt. 



146 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

With the rifle so equipped but not yet checked on 
tang and fore-end, I went into another match of four 
events, winning the bear with a score of 44x50, mak- 
ing a 34 with the running deer (two hits in shoulder, 
two in lungs, one clean miss in front), and a 30 with 
the, bounding antelope, which means three hits and 
two misses. This beast is some hard to hit, for his 
rump is only about eighteen inches in diameter and 
he bobs up and down at unexpected intervals, and 
you can fire your five shots at will, taking as many 
cracks at him at a time as possible — for you may not 
see him again! With the same rifle I lost out on 
the Mountain Sheep event at 300 yards, because I 
was still prone to hold as in military shooting — i. e., 
with the bull's-eye showing above the sight. Hunting 
rifles are sighted to hit where held on big game, and 
if you lift the sights into the ram's body you blot him 
out almost entirely at that range. I chose to hold 
under him, firing at the last instant as the sights rose 
on his body, with the result of putting the whole group 
under the animal's belly. However, I was beginning 
to feel somewhat acquainted with my rifle, and now 
started in on the supposition of unknown ranges, 
drawing coarse or fine, as the case might be, and 
targeting the peep so as to learn just what one of 
its divisions meant in inches of elevation at various 
ranges. Of course, there is no time to do this sight 
changing in the game fields, but an accurate knowl- 
edge of it is useful when, say, you have completed a 
stalk on sheep or goat, are still out of sight, and have 
plenty of time to set sights for an estimated range of 
from three hundred to three hundred and fifty yards. 



KNOW YOUR GUN 147 

Beyond that sheep are not shot, as a rule — at least, 
you've got to show me! — for the simple reason that 
the front sight is then a good deal larger than the 
animal. Up to that range the old-timer simply draws 
a "leetle coarse," as he knows by experience just what 
his rifle will do with varying coarseness of sight. 

The next study was the supplementary. There 
are two of them made for the .35, the brass-chamber 
supplementary, shooting the .38 long, and the steel 
supplemental with a clip up near the top end, which 
holds the .380 automatic. I tried out the first, be- 
cause its cartridges would go in my revolver with- 
out necessitating taking along another breed of am- 
munition. The groups were fine — four inches at 
40 yards offhand shooting — and I won a grouse shoot 
with it against good old John Dietz, of Olympic fame. 
Along about the third box of cartridges the extractor 
came out, bringing with it the head of the supple- 
mentary cartridge! Now, then, you're out in Wyo- 
ming, eighty miles from a railroad, and have just 
shot a grouse with the supplementary. Its head com- 
ing off has put the big-game rifle out of commission 
and you are to get out the rest of that headless shell 
with such tools only as are found about camp. I 
confess to having a fairly complete assortment of 
small tools with me on the trail and I tried them all. 
At the end of two hours that supplementary was stuck 
tighter than ever and I was all in, with the rifle ruined 
for the rest of the trip — Know your gun ! A friend 
of mine had this very thing happen, also, and it cost 
him four dollars at a gunsmith's to get the barrel 
off and the shell removed by heating the barrel. As 



148 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS . 

for me I simply said, "Moral: bring along a steel 
shell extractor," for that is what solved the difficulty 
in a jiffy. Never again will I go into the mountains 
without one after that lesson! At the same time I 
had the Marble Arms Co. send me their steel supple- 
mentary, since the .38 long brass supplementary has 
been taken off the market because of the weakness 
of its head. This was strong and sure, the whole 
body of the shell being hard steel with a firing pin 
down the centre. The .38 automatic cartridges (rim- 
less) fit in the end of this shell, which places them 
well into the rifle lands of the .35. Using the pearl tri- 
angle leaf sight, I got group after group with it at 
40 yards not exceeding three inches, and the noise of 
the cartridge is quite insignificant. For grouse, rab- 
bits and ducks along the trails in the Rockies it will 
be first class. On my last trip I used the .38 revolver 
and armory cartridges in the bolt rifle for this work, 
both of which were rather noisy though accurate 
enough. 

Turning to the new shotgun, a few tries at the 
traps with standard loads showed that I was on the 
right track, for my scores at once jumped to 17, 19, 
20 and once a 22, which was an unheard-of feat for 
me. I had one day afield with her up North, when 
everything went lovely, and then I took her down 
to South Carolina on a quail and woodcock shoot. 
Before going I made one experiment with her. As 
sold over the counter both barrels were tight choked, 
as revealed by trying a ten-cent piece on them. It 
looked bad for my right barrel on the rise of the 
covey, but there was no time to have the right bored 



KNOW YOUR GUN 149 

out to medium choke, so I decided to try "brush" 
loaded shells in the full-choked right. Trying out 
these shells at the traps, I missed twenty-five straight 
— an unheard-of feat — at least, I never heard of even 
a beginner missing the whole twenty-five! I tried 
snapping them the instant they showed over the trap- 
house; holding near and holding far ahead; under 
and over — every conceivable trick that I knew to 
produce a hit, but all in vain. The rise is at sixteen 
yards, and before the quickest shot can find the bird 
he has gone at least twenty yards more; total, 36 — 
out of range of the brush load. And yet the patterns 
exhibited herewith do not show very much scatter, 
about 40 per cent choke. I tried those shells on quail 
on that trip, but gave them up at the end of the sec- 
ond day. For rising coveys they did not seem to 
produce results, probably because I am no snap shot. 
But I invariably missed with my right and killed with 
my left, if the birds had not already got into cover. 
About noon of the second day I shot a quail with 
the left at 40 yards who pitched into a vine-covered 
dead tree just after being hit. I went into the swamp 
after him, and when I got under the tree I saw that 
he was still very much alive and would probably get 
away unless shot again. Then I bethought me of 
those brush shells. Pacing off eighteen yards, I raised 
the gun and fired one. Down came the quail and 
when I picked him up there were just three pellets in 
him, one of which must have been the original pellet 
which had wounded him. A standard shell in the 
full-choked barrel would have minced him at that 
range. 



150 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

This explained the mystery of the brush shells — 
too open a pattern for more than eighteen to twenty 
yards in thick brush — and the patterns herewith of 
8's at 30 and 40 yards made with brush shells bear 
this contention out. During the rest of the shoot I 
used standard loads in both left and right barrels, 
often missing with the right because the covey bird 
would be too near. The pattern of 369 No. 7^2 pel- 
lets in a 24-inch circle at thirty yards, made with the 
full-choked left (85%), explains this. The gun shot 
far closer than I could hold at this distance, and thirty- 
two pellets in the 5 -inch bull showed that I would 
have minced the bird, anyhow. So, on my return to 
the city, I proceeded to get still further acquainted 
with my shotgun by having her right barrel bored 
out to medium choke. As roughly measured by a 10- 
cent piece, this widened the barrel to a scant 1/32 
inch more than the diameter of the coin — just about 
the same as both barrels of the old Belgian double. 
Patterning it, I got 353 No. 7^ pellets in a 30-inch 
circle at 30 yards (82%), twelve of which found the 
5-inch bull's-eye. Stepping off to 40 yards, I gave 
her the full-choked left, with the result of 337 pellets 
in the 30-inch circle (78%), fourteen of which found 
the bull's-eye. Incidentally, I might point out that 
the brush shells gave 257 pellets (57%) in the 30- 
inch circle at thirty yards and 187 (41%) at forty. 

Would that medium-bored right be good medicine 
with doubles at the traps? The answer to that came 
at the next tournament I went into, where I scored 
22x25 at the main event (highest score of my life, 
so far) and 17x25 at doubles. Also, 11x24 at the 




BRUSH LOAD IN FULL CHOKED LEFT BRUSH LOAD FULL CHOKED AT 

AT 30 YARDS. NO. 8 SHOT 40 YARDS 




MEDIUM CHOKED RIGHT AT 30 YARDS FULL CHOKED LEFT AT 40 YARDS 

G INCHES OFF CENTER HOLDING 




FULL CHOKED LEFT AT 30 YARDS 
IN 24-INCH CIRCLE 



MOUNTAIN SHEEP STANDING 
TARGET AT 300 YARDS 



KNOW YOUR GUN 1 151 

quail shoot and 8x15 at the hand trap. This last 
event is lots of fun and quite difficult. The hand- 
trap man stands behind the shooters and calls "Mark!" 
as he throws the birds. Where in blazes the bird may 
be is up to the shooter to find out, and many a 
ludicrous miss and many a difficult hit shows up dur- 
ing the event. The medium choke was just right for 
this sort of work, provided that you found the birds 
quickly and put it right on them with fast gun. Slow 
fire always lost the bird. 

The next question was what that left could be de- 
pended upon for ducks at 30 and 40 yards, and what 
the right could do for ducks hovering over the stools 
at 18 yards or jumping up from them at 30 yards to 
top of rise. Patterns at 30 and 40 yards with the 
medium right and full choked left, shooting 4's, were 
made. Both gave about the same results, the right 
putting in 112 pellets at 30 yards and the left 115 
pellets at 40 yards, either good medicine for a duck 
who would himself half fill the 30-inch circle. Some 
of these patterns dropped as low as 80 pellets, show- 
ing that 5's would give a more uniform pattern in 
this particular gun. Tests on shooting true to sights 
and hitting a stationary blue rock with swinging gun 
brought some more facts into the ring of Know Your 
Gun. Some of those old relics put their patterns from, 
six inches to a foot ofif centre; the new gun put hers 
dead on if you could hold with a rifle sight. But, as 
some of the patterns here show,, it is the easiest thing 
in the world to shoot ofif centre from three to six 
inches at a stationary object with a shotgun, making 
an astonishing difference in the pattern as regards 



152 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

pellets in the bull's-eye, and this is, I believe, at the 
bottom of the beginner's many misses with the shot- 
gun. Unless naturally expert, he has a good many 
hundred practice shells to fire before arriving con- 
sistently in the twenty squad. To swing with the bird 
accurately, to lead him accurately, and to still centre 
your pattern on him is a fine art not to be learned in 
a day, and certainly not with a gun that does not fit. 
And, in the game field, this fit is even more essential, 
for in the excitement of shooting at wild game you 
go right back to first principles and point the gun 
naturally, with no time for the eye or brain to cor- 
rect faults in alignment. And the result is that your 
gun does not point where you think you are aiming it, 
and a clean miss is scored. In the present state of 
our game, particularly in the North, the chances at 
game are so few that not many misses can be per- 
mitted without the hunter coming home with an empty 
bag. 

As to the revolver, there is little to say about her. 
I once made a fine score, 45x50, with a cheap revolver 
at the 15-yard range. Next morning I went out with 
the standard target for the 50-yard range, confidently 
expecting to repeat the performance. The score 
showed, with the very same holding, an inclination on 
the part of the revolver to miss the target altogether, 
nor did fifty cartridges bring to light any further de- 
tails except that the cheap revolver would sling its 
bullets two feet or more ofr" your holding at 50 yards 
and was absolutely unreliable. After going over 
what I wanted my revolver to do for me on the hunt- 
ing trial, I bought the .38 officers' model and proceeded 



KNOW YOUR GUN 153 

to get acquainted with it. We have been staunch 
friends ever since. She had no sight changes to make 
nor trigger adjustments, nor any monkey business 
whatever. All you had to do was to get to work 
and learn how to shoot her. What can be done with 
that revolver let the Kentucky plate-shooters at ioo 
yards attest. During the three years that I have 
been shooting her my scores have climbed steadily un- 
til they now run between 65 and 68x100, on the stand- 
ard American 50-yard match target with 4-inch bull 
ring. Out West she kept a camp supplied with fresh 
grouse for three weeks, and occasionally produced a 
rabbit, shot on the run. At the man-killing target 
she has twice scored 17x25 and once 23x25. Only 
once have I doubted her and that was one year at a 
match where I made what appeared from the holding 
to be three successive bulls, but which were each 
greeted by a waving of the score stick indicating a 
total miss of the target. At the third of these I lost 
faith in my old friend and proceeded to sight coarse 
and high, with the result of two fours above the bull. 
An examination of the target found all the rest of 
the shots in the bull, which was evidently the last place 
the score-boy thought of looking for them, so I pro- 
tested the score and demanded a second shoot. But 
that is not all of that yarn : while waiting for my turn 
to come around again, at the tail of the procession, I 
entered a quail shoot at the traps, tied my opponent 
and had to shoot off. Coming back to the revolver 
range, I took up the good old six-gun and started after 
some more bull's-eyes, but, alas ! the ice-cold arm that 
was once so steady was now hot and quivering, shot 



154 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS . 

to a frazzle with fifty shells in the 12-ga., and, try as 
I would, I could hardly score on the target at all ! In 
addition to Know Your Gun — Know Yourself ! 

In match-shooting, never perform any violent ex- 
ercise with one set of muscles if you're going to use 
another in shooting. Never pull the trap's lever for 
the squad if you are just going into an important 
event yourself in the next squad; never shoot rifle or 
shotgun just before attempting a revolver score; 
never run a race or indulge in violent exercise just 
before going into a difficult rifle match. You simply 
cannot get your body quiet, and it is a still body that 
makes possible a fine rifle score. A strap helps a lot, 
and, as many a big-game shot is offered after a vio- 
lent race or climb, the only way to avoid misses due 
to pounding heart and bursting lungs is to have a 
quickly set strap and train yourself to a style of rifle- 
shooting that co-ordinates eye and trigger finger to 
let off with quick aim at the precise instant that the 
bead is on the animal. The military style of firing, 
with gun on top of thumb and forefinger and trigger 
"wished" off while holding dead under the bull, ex- 
plains why so many world-renowned military shots 
will miss a bear as big as a cow at 60 yards after a 
chase over mountain slopes and down timber that 
would tax the lungs of an elephant. 

Know your gun ! One rifle, one shotgun, one side 
arm, if you will, but know what they can do over the 
whole range of their capacity and how to get results 
with them. It's the secret of the old-timer's "git thar" 
meat gun that comes home with the game and lets 
mighty few fighting chances get away! 



CHAPTER XI 

the; man's game: of trap-shooting 

"Yessir, it's a man's game !" chortled the enthusi- 
astic New Member, excitedly ripping the side off a 
fresh box of cartridges. "You can have all your 
tennis and your golf — me for this ! I love it !" He 
slipped the box of shells into the pocket of his canvas 
trap belt and picked up the prize new trap grade pump 
gun from the rack just as the squad hustler came 
through bawling parodies on the names of five club 
members. "That's my squad, and bully boy! I've 
drawn my pet position for an opener!" he yelped, 
prancing out to the No. 2 trap platform and taking 
his stand at No. 5 position. 

He was in great form that afternoon — full of 
sparkle, snap, the old pep — that sure, easy, joyous 
confidence that smashes 'em all. Four right quar- 
ters whizzed by him and were maced one after the 
other without a miss. 

"Gee, son, you're findin' 'em easy to-day !" grinned 
the veteran at No. 4, delightedly noting that this 
smashing right quarters was becoming a habit with 
the N. M. 

"Sure! Just can't miss 'em!" chuckled the New 
Member, walloping the tar out of a straight-away,. 
his fifth and last bird at No. 5. He raised the gun 

155 



156 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

muzzle and stepped behind the squad to the No. I 
position. A strong northwest wind was blowing, 
from which the clubhouse had shielded him at No. 
5, but at No. i the full force of the gusts whipped 
about him. He had just time to load and lay the piece 
when No. 5 fired and it was up to him to call "Pull !" 
The bird ripped from the trap-house, a fast straight- 
away, and just as he was going after it, the wind 
tipped his hat nearly over his eyes. A little thing, but 
enough to make the scorer call "Lawst!" and break 
the winning streak. His next two birds were the 
meanest that can be shot out of a trap-house — 
"wild" left quarters at the No. 1 position. Our trap- 
shooter did not know that, being a novice, but he knew 
that he missed them both, and immediately that old 
pep, that superb confidence, that just-can't-miss-'em, 
began to evaporate. In spite of jamming his hat down 
over his ears, the wind would still lift it just enough to 
make him nervous, and he tried so very hard for his 
fourth bird — a right quarter and easy from No. 1 
— that he missed it also. For the fifth bird he had to 
call "Pull!" three times, drawing broken targets the 
first two, so that by the time the third bird finally got 
off, the strain of concentration on the rise had grown 
so acute as to make him miss again. 

Disgustedly he moved on to the No. 2 position, 
and this brought the Old Veteran alongside him again 
at No. 1. 

"Missed every damned bird at No. 1," growled 
the N. M., his ears going white with nervousness. 
"Bum work; only 50 per cent so far." 

"Yea, I seen ye stabbin' the air full of holes," 




SCENE AT THE GRAND AMERICAN HANDICAP TRAPSHOOTING TOURNAMENT 




THE TRAP PULLER AT WORK 




'* " !.| M ' ' ll»lllllllll.l» II I I iiiiIii. J i 

HMNMIM 



TRAPS OF THE ASBURY PARK GUN CLUB 
Shooting the clay pigeons out over the surf. 




MAN'S GAME OF TRAP-SHOOTING 157 

chuckled the Veteran. "You want to take it easy, 
son ; don't let nothin' get y'r goat, no matter what else 
ye do. Y're just goin' to break every blamed bird 't 
No. 2. See 'f you don't!" 

"Pull !" croaked the N. M. It was a right quar- 
ter, mild angle, and he blew it all to bits. 

"That's the talk !" cheered the Veteran. "Just see 
what ye done to that one ! Now get all the rest and 
ye'll go out with 20." 

The New Member prayed stoutly for a bunch of 
easy ones to restore his nerve, and the kind fates sent 
him two straight-aways, another right quarter and 
a wild left quarter, the latter being the only one that 
got away scot free. 

At No. 3 he was on easy street and broke all five, 
as pretty much everything looks like a straight-away 
from this position, and at No. 4 he poled over two fast 
right quarters, dropped one straight-away and got an- 
other and, to his intense surprise and satisfaction, 
nabbed a sizzling left quarter dusting away appar- 
ently at right angles to him. 

"Well, I got eighteen, anyhow," he peeped cheer- 
ily at the Old Veteran, as they left the stand. "It's 
a man's game, I tell you ! Me for another go !" He 
went over to the squad window and chucked in a quar- 
ter. "Put me down for the next squad, will you, 
Jimmy?" 

Yes, sir; it's the most exhilarating game there is. 
The man that tells you that trap-shooting is as mo- 
notonous as jumping over a stick a hundred times — 
you might kick it down accidentally four times and 
thus get a score of 96 — simply doesn't know the first 



158 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

thing about trap-shooting. Usually it is the expert 
on wild- fowl shooting that makes this crack, but I 
notice that you never find him even in the 80 per cent 
class in the big tournaments. Just think what you 
have to do to add up 96. In five squads, from five 
different positions, with all kinds of angles of flight, 
usually in gusty weather, you have to break 23 to 25 
four times and make at least one 25 straight. Only 
those who have shot week after week at the traps 
know how infernally hard that is to do. Oh, yes; it's 
just like jumping over a stick — once in a while you 
might accidentally miss one ! Well — try it ! 

Trap-shooting as a sport is one with rifle-shooting, 
archery, bait-casting, revolver-shooting — a combina- 
tion of skill, nerve, and eyesight that enables you to 
hit a chosen mark. Since the world began man has 
always felt a certain thrill and pleasure in striking a, 
distant mark with a missile ; he is the only animal on 
earth that can do it; it's his badge of superiority over 
tooth and claw, and the thrill is so deep in the blood 
that it never fails, no matter if you pulverize the fly- 
ing clay for the thousandth time, puncture your hun- 
dredth three-hundred-yard bull, drive your nth arrow 
into the gold, bean the centre float with a wooden 
plug, or shoot out the last bit of black out of the pistol 
bull. You never tire of turning the trick — when you 
doit! 

This is at the basis of the fascination of trap- 
shooting. If it were easy to hit every one of 'em, the 
sport would soon pall ; but it's not. The best man in 
our club is still reaching out for a consistent 25 
straight. He gets one every once in so often; gener- 



MAN'S GAME OF TRAP-SHOOTING 159 

ally, though, he hangs up 24 or 23. And his trouble 
is — straight-aways ! He never misses either right or 
left quarters at any angle, but in almost any string a 
little pop straight-away is likely to sizzle out of reach 
before he can nail it down, and so spoil his 25 straight ; 
for the straight-away is a deceptive beast and is out 
of range before the deliberate man can hold on him. 
What he probably needs is a little more speed. 

Another man worried along on 16's and 18's with- 
out material improvement until he had his gun 
straightened and a couple of ivory sights put on. He 
then astonished the onlooking world with a run of 
50 straight, and is now seldom out of the 20 class. 
Yet the day before this was written he did only 11, 
showing how even the winners have their off days. 
Oh, yes; trap-shooting is as easy as kicking over a 
stick! This shooter leads 'em a mile — according to 
his own version, "two miles." In other words, he is 
slow in swinging; wherefore a gusty day at the traps 
or field-shooting in brush and thicket would be apt to 
knock him off the Christmas tree. 

And, as for "us dubs," among which is cheerfully 
classed the writer of this tayle — we who have never, 
never been guilty of more than 22 out of 25 — we have 
everything the matter with us, from "nerves" to 
sloppy holding. Trap-shooting is just like golf or 
any other game of skill — too much butting in of The 
Brains will spoil any score. By this I mean that the 
action is far too swift for mental control such as one 
uses in deliberate rifle fire, and to hit the clay consist- 
ently you must depend largely upon that subconscious 
training of eye and muscle called "form." 



160 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

Which brings us to the schooling in how to ac- 
quire it. Watch an inexperienced golf player ad- 
dressing the ball. He makes a mountain of labour of 
it forsooth; expends a ton of energy getting his 
stance ; measures at least five times his club distance ; 
swings the brassie aloft ever so carefully, his entire 
mentality concentrated on every movement; and then 
the stroke, resembling somewhat a paralytic reaching 
for his crutch, and the net result is a badly mutilated 
green and a 50- foot bounce for the ball. He is at- 
tempting to do the impossible, to mentally direct every 
action of his muscles in driving that ball. It can't be 
done; the action is too swift and the mind rather in- 
terferes than helps. 

Along comes the veteran; he gives one glance at 
the ball, another at the distant green. There is a 
graceful, apparently careless, upward sweep of the 
club, a powerful, accurate stroke, and the ball soars 
over the field, and bumps, skips, hops and rolls onto 
the next green. Hole in two. Easy ! 

Now, observe the beginner at the traps. Intense 
mental concentration in every feature; ears and lips 
gone white with nervousness. His turn comes to call 
"Pull!" and the gun is jammed to his shoulder and 
forcibly held over the trap-house. Every ounce of 
will-power he owns is looking over that barrel. What 
is he thinking about ? Oh, everything ! He's worry- 
ing about his score, worrying over what kind of a bird 
he's going to get, worrying over his shells, the fit of 
his gun, and, more than all, just plain scared to death. 
But, above all, his mind is determined to see that the 
gun is pointed right at that bird, no matter where it 



MAN'S GAME OF TRAP-SHOOTING 161 

goes. Pull ! A left quarter shoots out over the land- 
scape; there is a wild, wobbly scramble of the gun 
muzzle after the scurrying bird, a second more care- 
ful sight in the general neighbourhood of the target, a 
late pull of the trigger — and the scorer sings out 
"Lawst!" in that cheerfully aggravating tone that 
scorers have. 

Along comes the Renowned Professional. He 
points the gun — it isn't even at his shoulder yet — he 
lets out a yeep intended to mean "Pull!", there is a 
quick wiggle of the gunstock, a spanking report, and 
the bird is ground to powder before it gets fifteen 
yards from the traphouse. And the answer to it is — 
Form; that subconscious training of the muscles that 
do the work under the eye's direction, so that neither 
requires more than general supervision of the brain 
instead of its direct assistance. Form is gotten by 
learning right in the first place, and then sticking to 
it until it becomes second nature. 

And there is no one correct form in trap-shooting, 
as there is in golf. Every man has his own particu- 
lar style of holding and swinging that is his one best 
bet, and the thing to do is to develop that until you 
can swing and fire in your sleep. However, there are 
a few fundamental principles that nearly all shooters 
are agreed on. First, holding your gun butt well in, 
on the chest rather than on the shoulder muscles. 
This enables you to swing your body right or left with 
equal facility, neither way introducing any fatal 
cramping of the muscles. 

Second, fast swinging. Learn to swing with the 
bird, leading him not over a foot or so, and firing as 



162 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS . 

you swing. It is fatal to stop, and it is also fatal to 
do as some shooters do — aim at a guessed point in 
the line of flight and snap, hoping that the charge and 
the bird will collide. Some very good shots do this, 
just as you would throw a stone ahead of a flying tin 
can, aiming at a point where you think the two will 
collide. And the average man has just about as much 
chance to shine with the clays that way as he has to 
scintillate as a pebble-caster. 

Third, good, fast timing. I'd rather miss the 
whole twenty-five and get off every shot inside of one 
second than get a few of them by pottering around. 
The clay flies about 30 yards in the first second. It 
starts 16 yards from your gun muzzle, so that if you 
get off your shot in four-fifths of a second you will 
get him at 40 yards in a straight-away and 28 to 30 
yards in quarter birds. If you potter around much 
the straight-away will be 46 yards away in a second, 
54 yards in 1% seconds (and your chances of hitting 
him are now as thin as frog's hair) ; wherefore you 
simply must be prompt. Get the habit of fast timing, 
even at the sacrifice of some accuracy at first. You 
have acquired good form when you can hold accu- 
rately in good, fast, even time. Having this drilled 
into your subconscious muscular system, your brain 
is free to exercise judgment on such matters as lead, 
windage, shot drift, etc. 

As to lead, in quartering birds, suppose you reach 
him in 30 yards. Now, the velocity of your shot is 
about 1,000 feet — 330 yards — a second, so that it will 
get there in one-eleventh second. Assuming that you 
have learned to swing right along with your bird and 



MAN'S GAME OF TRAP-SHOOTING 163 

have gotten over checking the gun as you pull the trig- 
ger, if you lead apparently two feet ahead it will be 
about right for a left quarter from the No. I position, 
as will be noted by the accompanying diagram of a 
blue rock hit at the end of the first second, angle of 
flight being 30 degrees from the normal. The bird 
flies four feet to every one of your apparent lead; dur- 
ing the time the shot is getting there it will have gone 
eight feet, wherefore two feet of lead will centre it in 
your target. As you take the same bird from the 
other positions, the lead grows less and less until you 
hold nearly dead on him at No. 5. The reverse is so 
of right quarters taken from No. 5 back to No. 1. 
This diagram also shows pretty conclusively that with 
correctly swinging gun and fast timing very little ap- 
parent lead is necessary — not over 2^4 feet in even a 
"wild" bird of 45 degrees angle. I say "apparent" 
lead, because from trap positions you do not actually 
hold ahead of the clay, but to one side of it in the 
direction it is going, as will be noted from the 
diagram. 

Having acquired form, the next thing is nerves, or 
"nerve," whichever way you take it. Getting back to 
the story of the New Member again, his first move 
after joining was to get into the little 10-shot practice 
squads which infested the No. 2 trap. Nothing to scare 
him there; plenty of other dubs, all climbing hope- 
fully, with maybe an old stager or two to brace them 
up with a steady string of consistent hits. He gets 
the glad hand all around ; his squad is called, and be- 
fore he knows it he's out on the platform, looking 
jocularly over the barrel and "bustin' " every one as 



164 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS- 

they rise, without half trying. No strain, no worry, 
no gasping breath, no over-trying — just poling out a 
hit every time he calls "Pull !" 

Too easy — just can't miss 'em. Along about the 
seventh shot an easy one gets away and he suddenly 
wakes up to realise where he is and what he is doing. 
Old Man Nerves gets back on the job again, and his 
body becomes rigid, breathless, concentrated, para- 
lytic with self-consciousness. Gone is that easy, mas- 
terful swing that got him the six straight, and in itsl 
place we have an anxious, nervous human, trying ever 
so hard to get Nos. 7 and 8, and missing them both. 
Ten he lands by a broken chip, and goes out with 
seven when he should have ten straight. 

He rushes back to the score window and enters 
the next squad, determined to do a straight run or die, 
and by the time his turn comes to go out on the plat- 
form he is in a frenzy of impatience. He gets No. 5 
position and — fires his gun immediately after calling 
"Pull !" before the bird even appears at all, too nerv- 
ous to notice the pressure already on the trigger fin- 
ger. Just about there he "blows up," as they say of 
a baseball pitcher afflicted with the same trouble. 
He's all on edge, all on tiptoes ; has the wobbles, wan- 
dering gun muzzle, lost shell, safety on — every known 
disease that can upset a trap-shooter — and he finally 
sneaks away too ashamed to look his score in the face. 

A plain case of nerves. Shows what they can do 
to a man who was just about to run off ten straight. 
And the answer to it is — Prevention. Don't have 
things to annoy and upset you. Get a good trap belt, 
with a pocket for the box of shells, one side of which 



MAN'S GAME OF TRAP-SHOOTING 165 

you rip off. You'll never then be feeling around in a 
dozen pockets for a lost shell ; and the last one of each 
layer of five tells you when to move on to your next 
position. Get a trap vest or coat with a pad to keep 
your shoulder from being hammered up, or else get 
a recoil pad and put it on your gun for the same pur- 
pose. Its added stock length will be no detriment in 
trap-shooting, where a long stock is rather an advan- 
tage. Either way, you'll note the advantage of the 
protection the very first long run you make, for, at 
the end of the first 25, the pound is sure to tell on your 
shooting. And do not neglect a barrel protector, or 
else a glove for the left hand. No man can shoot well 
when pestered to death with a pair of red-hot gun 
barrels, nor can he save the situation by attempting to 
shoot with a kerchief in his left hand. And they do 
get hot on a sunny summer day, particularly if shoot- 
ing doubles. 

Another line of toil in shutting out the nerve jinx 
is to make the aiming game easier. If your gun has 
a 3 % -inch drop, straighten it to 2^2 inches. If the 
glare of bright sunlight and glistening gun barrels 
annoys you, get a pair of amber glasses. They'll clean 
out your shooting eye a lot, anyhow. If you have a 
tendency to twist the stock and throw the top rib out 
of alignment, by all means put on a pair of ivory bead 
sights; some shooters prefer the rear one red. And 
then, give a little thought and study to the shells, 
powder and load you use. I've had a mate at the 
traps face me with trembling lips and twitching mus- 
cles after doing a score of only 7 out of 25 — a good 
holder, too — simply shot all to pieces, hammered to a 



166 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

frazzle by the heavy loads he was using. Yet the big 
bruiser next to him had just whaled out a 21 using the 
same load. Never feazed him at all. There are 
some powders so violent that they will "get your goat" 
and give you gun headache in the first string unless 
you tip the scales over 150. Others are mild and 
pleasant to use; but, for a light-weight man, 3 drams 
of powder and 1^ -ounce shot are plenty for consist- 
ent work, while 3^x1^ will ruin him. And don't 
neglect ear protectors or cotton wads in your ears. 
It makes a vast difference in your scores whether or 
no your raw ear drums are being pounded by that in- 
cessant discharge of the squad guns. Try it and see. 

If you are using your pet double for trap shoot- 
ing, find out which barrel has the heaviest choke and 
use that exclusively. Learn to hold close enough to 
hit consistently with it, rather than use the wide scat- 
ter of the other barrel. You may hit more at first 
with the latter, but in the long run your full choke 
will give you the fewest unaccountable misses, and 
even its pattern is none too close for the elusive clay. 

Be careful about doing other muscular work than 
trap-shooting when your squad comes up off and on 
all day. I've seen a man's performance utterly ruined 
because he good-naturedly consented to pull the trap 
during the absence of the trap-boy. It is hard work, 
that regular swing of the lever and squeeze of the 
release, and it put his shooting muscles so off their 
form as to make him lose most of his next twenty-five 
birds. 

The final jinx to chase out is the which-trap quan- 
dary. Modern clubs have but one — an automatic. 



MAN'S GAME OF TRAP-SHOOTING 167 

But if your club starts in with three, donated by vari- 
ous members, they will be arranged and pulled on the 
Sargent system, set four feet apart behind the screen. 
Generally you hold fair over the one trap in the trap- 
house and come up with the bird, but with three traps 
it is wise to keep tabs and hold over your trap. Oth- 
erwise you'll have to swing a matter of four feet 
before getting into the line of flight of your bird, and 
there is no time to do it. 

To the writer's mind, if you can afford it, a grand 
way out of all these jinxes is to buy n trap grade gun 
and leave the field gun without any trap specialties. 
This is not so expensive as it looks. While wonder- 
ful high-priced trap guns are to be had for from one 
to three hundred dollars, for about thirty dollars you 
can get trap grade repeaters, especially stocked, bored 
and designed for trap-shooting, and they are really 
splendid arms, too, many a trap tournament cham- 
pionship being credited to them. 

Assuming that the foregoing screed has awakened 
in the reader a burning desire to hit the trap-shooting 
thing, your first move would be to own a trap yourself 
or join the local gun club. For $6.50 you can buy a 
very good trap, shooting all angles, hand loading, and 
a barrel of blue rocks costs $2.50 for 500. All you 
now need is a shallow-box, an open field, and a friend 
to pull for you, and you are ready for practice. Be 
sure to peg your trap box down with stout stakes, for 
the rearward kick of the trap will take all the drive 
out of the bird unless it has something solid to kick 
against. 

Shoot fifty straight-aways, beginning about ten 



168 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

yards from the trap and working back to the stand- 
ard distance of 16 yards. Then fifty right quarters; 
then fifty left quarters. Now do ten birds of each, 
moving from No. I to No. 5 position every two shots. 
You will find it makes a vast difference which posi- 
tion you shoot from. And there will be certain birds 
from certain positions which will get away again and 
again, and the only way is to shoot twenty or fifty of 
them in a string, studying each shot. All of this spe- 
cial practice you cannot get at the club. I never saw 
a squad yet that would consent to shooting even ten 
left quarters or right quarters exclusively, for the 
good of the practice. There is sure to be at least one 
man out of the five to whom that particular bird is 
"soup," and it is not fair to ask him to spend his good 
money smothering ten of them. With the home trap 
you can work out any hard bird until the muscles 
which swing on him get over their awkwardness. 

Lone practice, however, is tiresome compared with 
the fun that three or four good fellows can get out of 
the same shooting, so your next move will be to look 
up some kindred spirits, get together three traps and 
fix some shooting dates. Some one loans the use of a 
field, or a beach or pond shore is selected, and the 
crowd chips in enough to buy rough hemlock boards 
for a screen. This should be 3 feet 6 inches high and 
16 feet long (the merchant length of the lumber), and 
the screen should be double, with the cracks of one set 
covered by the second set. Behind this screen are the 
three traps, screwed to three stout stakes driven into 
the ground for each trap. They are set four feet 
apart and the pull ropes led out through holes bored 



MAN'S GAME OF TRAP-SHOOTING 169 

in the bottom board. With the centre trap as centre 
and 16 yards as radius, a circle is then struck, and No. 
3 position staked out perpendicular to the board 
screen. Positions I, 2, 4 and 5 are then laid out on 
each side of No. 3, 6 feet apart. A good way to lo- 
cate these permanently is to drive in a rough post of 
bark timber or rough 3x3 square lumber at each posi- 
tion, standing 2 feet high from the ground and topped 
with a square board to set a box of shells on. You 
now have all that is essential to run off any shoot the 
crowd prefers ; in fact, the Camp Fife Club for years 
has pulled off all its tournaments with no other equip- 
ment than this, and there were never less than fifty 
entries. With it they hold the Novice Shoot, Quail 
Shoot, Club Championship and several practice shoots 
at every Encampment. Three boys are needed to run 
the traps — a puller, who sits behind the squad and sets 
the traps off in turn; a scorer, perched on an empty 
blue-rock barrel, and a lynx-eyed referee, to call 
"Lost!" and "Dead!" And almost every year the 
boys chip in to get some well-known "pro" to come up 
and coach along the novices. He sleeps in a tent dur- 
ing the entire encampment, piles right in on all the 
horseplay, and has a rip-roaring good time, the while 
dispensing words of trap wisdom and seeing that the 
shooting goes smoothly. 

The next step toward permanence is some sort of 
a shell and blue-rock shack. The simplest one I know 
of is at Sea Girt, where a skeleton pergola effect pre- 
sides over the field and is gay with an awning roof 
during shoots. If I recollect right, there is also a 
watertight locker for storing the traps and left-over 



170 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS .. 

blue rocks. The next step — and it is usually soon 
taken — is the installing of an automatic trap. This 
requires but one boy to operate, and needs a house 
over it about 6 feet wide by 5 feet deep and 3 feet 9 
inches in height. A pipe leads back to the pulley 
lever, with a stout telegraph wire inside of it, con- 
nected to the release catch. The puller makes a for- 
ward stroke with the lever, engaging the arm of the 
trap inside the trap-house, and then pulls back on the 
lever, thus putting tension on the spring. Meanwhile, 
the boy in the trap-house drops a blue rock in the car- 
rier. At the command "Pull !" the puller squeezes the 
release catch on the lever, which sets the arm free 
inside the trap-house, and the bird flies out. While 
the puller is reaching forward again with his lever, 
the boy in the trap-house changes the angle of throw 
of the trap and gets another clay ready. Such a trap 
can be either hired or bought outright from two dif- 
ferent companies, and can be worked as fast as a 
squad can fire, taking either singles or doubles. The 
house for it is best made of inch yellow pine sheathing, 
nailed horizontally to the four corner posts, outside 
of which is ^-inch tongue-and-groove wainscoting 
nailed vertically. The roof has a pitch of about 4 
inches and is covered with "Induroid" or "Rubberoid" 
roofing. A front door of wainscoting, hinged along 
the bottom, opens out flat on the field in front of the 
trap-house, and, when closed with a padlock up under 
the eaves, effectually locks up the trap and the stored 
piles of blue rocks inside. 

Let me tell you the story of the organisation of a 
certain club that is now one of the strongest in the 




THREE CLAY BIED TRAPS SET BEHIND BOARD SCREEN ON THE 
SARGEANT SYSTEM 




DOUBLE-TARGET AUTOMATIC CLAY BIRD TRAP 




INTERIOR OF TRAP HOUSE 



MAN'S GAME OF TRAP-SHOOTING 171 

country. When the writer built him a home in the 
forest of Interlaken, one of his first inquiries was 
about the status of trap-shooting in that locality. 
Well, it was the way it usually is — up at the township 
centre there were a few enthusiasts who got together 
occasionally for a shoot; down at Deal Inlet was a 
struggling organisation with four active members 
who brought their traps down Saturdays and set them 
up on the beach. I did a little sporadic practice with 
my own trap and gradually met one man after an- 
other interested in trap-shooting. Suddenly the talk 
crystallised into action. A few leading spirits in the 
Asbury Park Fishing Club went to work with the of- 
ficers of the Deal organisation and called a meeting 
at the Information Bureau on the Boardwalk on the 
night of December 21, 19 12. We had thirty- two men 
present that night, and proceeded to form the Asbury 
Park Gun Club. The first thing those thirty men did 
was to sign a petition to their Congressman, asking 
his support for the McLean- Weeks bill for Federal 
protection of migratory birds. I had nothing to do 
with instigating this; it was done entirely on their 
own initiative, after an appeal by E. C. Burtis, secre- 
tary of the club and game warden of the township. 
At that time the bill was on the Special Senate Calen- 
dar and needed every ounce of support it could get. 
I had just come from Washington, where things 
looked pretty blue, and was more than delighted to 
find spontaneous support coming up this way. It 
goes to show what trap-shooters will do of their own 
initiative for game protection. I gave them a few 



172 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

words on the McLean bill and then every man present 
stepped up and signed the petition. 

Next, we fixed the entrance fee at $2 and the 
yearly dues at $1.20. That put the treasurer in pos- 
session of about $90 in funds which he was author- 
ised to spend on lumber and three automatic traps. 
Permission was given us to use the beach in front of 
the Deal bathing pavilion during the winter, and 
the pavilion itself as a clubhouse, shell-room, 
etc. Shooting captains were then elected and in- 
structed to get up a shoot for New Year's Day. 
The committees then got busy and built two trap- 
houses and a screen for a third trap ; firing platforms 
were built of old lumber picked up here and there 
along the beach, and on New Year's Day the first 
shoot was held. It was a corker. The membership 
had jumped up to over a hundred and every one 
turned out. There were ten events of fifteen birds 
each, cash and merchandise prizes, practice events — 
all three traps busy all day long. An old sand pirate 
was on hand in the upper floor of the pavilion with 
huge vats of clam chowder, unlimited pie, and unbeat-* 
able biscuits — all free on the club. Quite a gathering 
of ladies watched the shooting from the glass-enclosed 
upper pavilion, and, though the day was blustery and 
cold, we had a great time. 

After that the club held regular shoots Wednes- 
days and Saturdays, with big tournaments on all holi- 
days, the largest of which was the three-day shoot 
during the Easter holidays. The membership had 
jumped to over 250, and the city of Asbury Park be- 
gan to take interest, donating $300 added money to 



MAN'S GAME OF TRAP-SHOOTING 173 

the Easter shoot. Realising the spectacular nature 
of trap-shooting, the city fathers determined to have 
it for a feature of their celebrated Boardwalk. We 
had to move somewhere, as soon as the bathing sea- 
son opened at Deal pavilion, so the city drove piles for 
us out in the ocean in front of the Boardwalk, on 
which the trap-houses were placed level with the 
Boardwalk. A handsome clubhouse was made over 
to our use, and firing platforms built out beyond the 
public railing of the Boardwalk, with runways lead- 
ing from them out to the trap-houses. We held a 
grand shoot on moving day, and the trap-shooting of 
our club is now one of the spectacular features of the 
Boardwalk, one of the attractions of Asbury Park, 
and always draws a crowd. The pigeons go sailing 
out over the surf, you have a good skyline to shoot 
against, and it's always cool and pleasant, even on the 
hottest summer day. Personally, I never miss a Sat- 
urday shoot. I never used to win anything, because 
my whole left side seemed to be afflicted with creep- 
ing paralysis, so that if I got eight left quarters (and 
I generally did — sometimes nine) my score was pretty 
sure to be 17. It's my fetish, that left quarter thing, 
but I love the game, knowing that some day the jinx 
will be chased — and then me for our 20-or-better 
squad ! And since this was written I have made it, 20 
to 22 is now my average. 



CHAPTER XII 

ClyAY BIRD PRACTICE AFlEU) 

To my mind the clay pigeon trap, properly used, 
is the only practical thing for training in wing shoot- 
ing. The outfit shown was evolved after consider- 
able experimentation and consists of a blue rock trap 
(Expert No. i), bolted to a shallow box 24 by 36 
inches, a small boy to pull the trap, a child's express 
wagon, sundry packages of clay birds and certain 
boxes of shells loaded with 73/2 chilled. I live, as do 
thousands of other gunners, in a section not too 
crowded, yet within town limits, so that it is at least 
a half-mile to the open fields — too far to carry a heavy 
trap. Various attempts at field practice in likely 
spots near my house simply resulted in stirring up a 
nest of anxious and indignant farmers. An automo- 
bile would have solved the problem, but being under a 
vow to live and die a poor man, heaven bless you, I 
have none. Besides, the cart can go where the auto 
cannot — along woodland trails, out into rough fields 
and the like. 

A little thought will convince you that the practice 
to be had with the clay pigeon trap much more closely 
approximates real wing shooting than any scheme for 
firing with swinging gun at a stationary mark or at 
such marks as tin cans thrown in the air. Neither 

174 



CLAY BIRD PRACTICE AFIELD 175 

in any way resembles real bird shooting, but the trap, 
if intelligently used, can imitate nearly every trick of 
feathered game, and in a shallow box can be set down 
anywhere with a couple of stakes driven in back of 
the box to take the kick of the trap. 

Not only that, but the tyro has still more elemen- 
tary lessons to learn; the arts of quickly and accu- 
rately training his gun upon flying game, of acquiring 
a uniform swing, and of releasing the trigger at the 
precise moment in the swing. Also unlearning the 
rifle trick of closing one eye, and, furthermore, get- 
ting accustomed to following a miss with one barrel 
promptly with the second ; in addition to which judg- 
ing distances and angles, getting the snap and swing 
of good gun work — in a word, all the habits which go 
to make good shotgun form. Nowadays we get so 
little opportunity in real field work to acquire this 
form, shots being few and far between in a day's 
hunting, that the proper place to work it up is in the- 
field with unknown trap, unknown angles and con- 
cealed puller. 

And it is good sport, too. I'd rather put in a 
morning at it than any other game I know of — golf, 
tennis, or even baseball, not excepted. As a primary 
lesson, arrange your trap in an open field grown high 
with goldenrod or short cornstalks. Lead out the 
pull string to the rear and have the boy conceal him- 
self in the goldenrod, first letting him set the trap at 
any angle and any elevation that suits his fancy. You 
now walk out into the field on the qui vive for game. 
Suddenly there is a cherk behind you, for all the 
world like the scurry of a quail getting up, and a clay 



176 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

saucer hurtles through the air, right or left quarter- 
ing, or, mayhap, overhead. If you are a novice you 
will throw your gun wildly to shoulder and snap off 
with half an aim, but the beauty of the scheme is that 
the bird is in reality very near, not over 15 yards, 
and is going comparatively slow, having made a good 
deal of its flight, so that you have all the time that 
you need to swing ahead and pull, realising all the 
time just what you are doing, and being able to judge 
how and why you hit and how and why you missed. 
The flight of the clay pigeon gets slower and slower 
as it falls, and it will still be in range when it alights, 
so that you have ample time for the second barrel if 
you miss with the first. This method teaches you 
quickness in throwing your gun into alignment upon 
the flash of the birds into the air, steadiness in taking 
time enough for an intelligent aim, and form in gun 
swinging, not stopping as you pull, but swinging along 
the line of flight so that the second barrel can follow 
the first immediately in case of a miss. If a beginner 
persists in snapping off half-cocked, take his shells 
away from him and give him twenty-five birds with 
empty gun until he learns to take time enough for an 
intelligent aim. 

Having acquired proficiency and steadiness at 
close ranges and slow birds, the next step will be what 
is called the "Quail Shoot." Choose a field for this 
full of brush and scrub pines. Conceal the trap be- 
hind a bush and lead out the pull string straight be- 
hind you. Now walk up on the trap with ready gun 
and the boy will pull when you are about six yards 
from the bush. The angle will be unknown, but you 



CLAY BIRD PRACTICE AFIELD 177 

have plenty of time, for even a slow gun can get on 
his bird in a second and a quarter. A clay pigeon 
leaves the trap at about 25 yards a second, so that the 
saucer is only 31 yards away when you are on it, leav- 
ing you half a second to putter around with your aim 
before the pigeon is out of range. With an Excelsior 
trap, slinging two saucers at once, good beginner's 
practice at doubles can be had from the "Quail 
Shoot." 

The tyro should now be ready for standard trap 
work. In spite of the sneers of veteran wing shots, 
clay bird shooting is not easy, particularly for begin- 
ners. I have known many of them to drudge along 
for a hundred shells without doing over six or seven 
"deads" out of each twenty-five. To get in practice 
for regular squad work, conceal the trap behind a 
bush as before and take your position sixteen yards 
to the rear, with the puller behind you. Line up your 
piece .carefully, holding directly over the bush, and 
call "Pull." The bird will rise from behind the bush 
and you follow up the line of flight, swinging the gun 
faster than the speed of the pigeon, and, just as you 
see that little disc swimming over the sight, pull. 
You'll get him. 

Why ? Because your gun is swinging faster than 
the bird is going, and during that instant that your 
hammer is falling and the trigge/ releasing you have 
swung ahead and automatically got your lead. If 
you halt the gun you are lost. The whole secret is 
speed. You have no time for change of angle of 
swing, nor for a wabbly second sight. In one second 
the bird is out of range. It is a tiny object, only four 



178 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

inches across, smaller than any winged game that 
flies, and beyond 38 yards even the pattern of a 
twelve opens out so that your chances of getting more 
than one pellet on the saucer are slim, while sixteens 
and twenties are out of the question except to those 
already expert at quick pointing. I have timed many 
crack squads at the big meets, and they all let off 
within four-fifths of a second from the time a bird 
appears above the trap shed. The saucers are broken 
at 18 to 22 yards from the trap, which gives the ex- 
treme range that an expert will uniformly kill at, at 
from 34 to 38 yards. 

Knowing the importance of time, you will then 
endeavour to swing accurately and let off promptly 
when you catch your birds — no wobbling or pottering 
to verify your sight, but strong, decisive work, hit or 
miss. Better a miss than a bird caught on a fluke 
out of range. Your previous practice with slow birds 
and short ranges should have got some gun speed into 
you, combined with your acquired steadiness and in- 
telligent aiming. Try fifty birds straightaway and 
fifty right and left quarters. If you are not hitting 
more than ten out of twenty-five, better move up to 
twelve yards until you get the hang of it. 

When you arrive at a consistent twenty birds out 
of twenty- five, unknown angles, 16 yards, go and join 
the nearest gun club; and before you go let me whis- 
per a few precepts of trap form in thine ear : First of 
all provide you with a leather or canvas shell box 
holder. It is simply a belt with a square pocket in front, 
which just fits a box of twenty-five shells. Tear off one 
side of the box exposing the upper tier of cartridges 



CLAY BIRD PRACTICE AFIELD 179 

and you will have no delays in reloading. Get an old 
glove for your left hand or else a barrel protector, for 
your first twenty-five will heat the gun so as to dis- 
tract your attention from the business in hand — 
breaking every clay. Next is squad etiquette. It is 
unpardonable to delay the regular Bang! Bang! 
Bang! of the squad for any cause whatever. Practi- 
cally the only allowable method of getting the other 
fellow's "goat" is consistent missing in a crack squad, 
which usually gets on the nerves of the others. How- 
ever, when you step into a squad of shooters, have 
everything ready for your string of twenty-five, and 
get up a cast-iron determination to break every single 
saucer. When the man next to you is firing, lay your 
piece carefully, seeing that the front sight is square 
and true on the centre of the rib, and hold directly 
over the part of the trap shed where your trap is lo- 
cated. Right after he fires, call "Pull!" catch your 
bird as it rises, climb after it and give it to him as you 
go. If you missed, either you halted your gun, didn't 
swing true, crossing the line of flight instead of going 
along it, twisted your gun, or didn't catch your bird on 
the trigger accurately as you swung up to him. If 
there is a wind, allowance must also be made for wind 
drift — one to three feet or more. Most beginners 
make the fatal mistake of not knowing which is the 
next trap. On the Sargeant system there are three 
traps, pulled from left to right. If the man next to 
you gets No. 2, you will certainly see a bird fly up 
from No. 3. Now if you hold in a general way over 
the centre of the trap shed, you are forced to swing 
the gun four feet over to No. 3 and then up after the 



180 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

bird. There is no time to do this, and as a matter 
of fact you will swing the gun in a circle like a runner 
tearing around second and third bases, and when you 
find your bird your gun is swinging one way and the 
pigeon going another. Result, a wobbly aim, a halted 
gun and an inevitable miss. 

Wherefore be sure and keep track of the traps and 
lay your piece over your trap before the man next to 
you calls "Pull!" 

If you are going to do much trap shooting, better 
take your gun to a smith's and have two ivory beads 
put on, the large one in place of the front sight and 
the small one half-way down the barrel. Align these 
to show but one bead when you hold over your trap, 
leaving you nothing to do but follow up and smash 
your bird when you call "Pull!" Enough, in all 
conscience. 

If these white beads are good for trap shooting, 
why not for field work ? The answer lies in the same 
basket with why 7^2 chilled only and why the gun at 
shoulder when calling "Pull!" — trap shooting calls 
for very accurate sighting on a very small target. 
There is no time at 16 yards from the traps to get 
your gun to shoulder and still have time to find that 
infinitesimal speck and kill it before it gets out of 
range. In the same way the raison d'etre of 7^ 
chilled — it is the one pellet that will give the densest 
possible pattern with the heaviest shot that will surely 
break a clay saucer if two of them hit it. The size 
was, as it were, invented especially for trap shooting. 
Two No. 8s will not do it with any certainty, and I 
have picked up many a pigeon with a neat hole in it 



CLAY BIRD PRACTICE AFIELD 181 

punctured by a single No. 7, said pigeon having been 
called "Lo-orst!" by the scorer. In one of the last 
numbers of a late lamented contemporary, a writer 
advocated field practice at clay birds with fours, sixes 
and eights as well as 7^4 s. Don't you do it, for you 
haven't a chance with fours unless your saucers are 
something the size of a mallard duck, and as for eights 
I once knew a wing shot who horned into a trap 
squad with a twenty-bore loaded with No. 8s soft, un- 
der the impression that his smaller shot would com- 
pensate for his smaller bore. He broke his first three 
straight, and we all sat up on our hind legs and 
flopped up our ears, for here was sure a wonder gun- 
pointer, — but as he lost the remaining twenty-two 
birds (some of which really did hop), our interest 
merely became academic again. Jack Fanning, who 
was present, remarked that with such a load he could 
hardly have done better himself, eights being too small 
to break a saucer with any regularity, and soft shot 
not only giving too open a pattern, but losing such a 
high per cent of the pattern through deformed pellets. 
In field work there is no time to align ivory beads, 
nor is your gun at shoulder when the game gets up, 
so the matted rib and the brass front sight are your 
main dependencies. For the tyro the first thing to do 
is to see that his gun fits him and then train his arm 
muscles to bring the gun to shoulder in true align- 
ment every time — that is, with the rib lying horizon- 
tal to the eye and the sight fair and square centred 
with the rib at the breech. Practise gun alignment 
by pointing at this, that and the other mark, and do it 
again and again half an hour daily until it becomes 



182 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

automatic. You cannot do this unless the gun fits 
you, and you can try this out at the gun store by look- 
ing fixedly at some object, shutting the eyes and point- 
ing the gun. Upon opening them you should see the 
object just over the sight with barrel and rib flat and 
true. If you see the whole barrel, a long streak of 
rib, and even the breech, the gun has nowhere near 
enough drop for you. If you see nothing but the 
breech and have to raise your head to catch the front 
sight, the gun has too much drop. Try another gun 
until fitted, or, if you must have that one, the gun- 
smith can fix it for you by bending and cutting the 
tang. 

Having gotten the lay of your piece off your mind, 
the next step is to go after freedom of vision. No 
man can judge distance with one eye shut, for it is a 
principle of optics that a lens throws all objects into a 
flat plane, and the eye is no exception. Neither can 
you half see what the bird is doing with one wing of 
your vision shut off. If you want to be master of the 
situation, you must put both eyes into it. You will 
find, on putting the two-eye aim into practice, that the 
gun and its muzzles are more or less of a compound 
blur, but that the front sight is tolerably distinct, since 
the master eye, your right, is on it. You are now in 
the hands of the Lord as regards alignment of your 
gun, as your eyesight is concentrated on that bird 
scorching along out in the field ; but you are still con- 
scious of that gleaming front bead, and, if your pre- 
vious training in laying the piece has been faithful, 
all will be well. 

To my mind this is the ideal form for wing shoot- 



CLAY BIRD PRACTICE AFIELD 183 

ing. As a psychologist would say, the subconscious- 
ness takes care of aiming and alignment, leaving the 
brain free to attend to seeing, distance and lead. 

But there is yet a higher plane, the so-called "gun- 
pointing" system, adapted to wing shooting by Dr. 
Carver. It is described as being in a class with hit- 
ting an object with a stone or a bow and arrow, no 
aim being taken, but the gun being pointed as one 
points a finger. Except for very short ranges and 
large marks, I am inclined to be sceptical of any gun- 
pointing system that pretends to ignore the sights. 
Both with rifle and revolver the gun pointer in reality 
aligns his sights and centres them under the mark as 
he pulls, or he can take off the sights and centre the 
barrel under the mark, but in both cases there must 
be the consciousness of an alignment. The reason is 
obvious; an eight-inch bull at fifty yards is a good 
deal smaller than a revolver sight, and a hair's- 
breadth variation either way means a miss. No man 
can point off-hand within a hair's breadth. 

I met one of these wonder gun pointers once, and 
the story will bear telling. He owned a Colt breech- 
loader bearing the date of '71 — one of those dear old 
six-guns with the barrel sticking up above the cham- 
bers, a little swing hatch on the side for loading and 
a fixed spring ramrod alongside the barrel to push out 
the shells. His father had carried it as a cowman all 
over the West, and it had more nicks on its handle 
than there are fleas on a greaser priest. The kid was 
a youth of great heart and high enterprise, for he be- 
gan telling me how he could hit beer-bottle tops with 
it at twenty-five yards, every shot. 



184 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

"Indeed and indeed," quoth I, "you are a man 
whom it is a great pleasure to meet and from whom 
much advancement might be gained. Now, I own an 
officer's model .38, with all the latest refinements, and 
if you will get that old war gun of yours we will de- 
bate the matter on my fifty-yard range." 

We did. The kid was some scared when he ac- 
tually faced the standard target at fifty yards, and 
muttered something about "Hain't never shot this- 
yere gun at no such range, nohow." 

I stepped up and made a mediocre score — there 
was a nine, two sevens, a six and a five — and then the 
kid came to the bat. He flashed off his string just 
about as quick as the gun could be pulled, and we 
rushed forward to garner the bull's-eyes. Alack and 
alas ! There were but two shots on the target ; one in 
each upper corner, by courtesy in the three ring; one 
lodged in the tree trunk above, another hit the billet 
of wood which held down the bottom of the target, 
while the fifth had gone from amongst us forever! 
I forbore to put him up against the same target at 
twenty-five yards, but made the mental reservation 
that those beer-bottle tops had been hit at twenty- 
five feet! 

"Let's see that six-pistol, son," said I when we 
got back to the fifty-yard range again. I laid it on 
the bull. "Man alive ! your front sight is three times 
as broad as the whole bull. Now take your time and 
centre your sight carefully on the bull before you 
let off." 

He did, scoring an eight and a seven, showing 
that the Colt product of '71, after forty years of use 



CLAY BIRD PRACTICE AFIELD 185 

and abuse, was quite as reliable as the fine weapon of 
191 2 — though I would scarce care to back the old boy 
against the 100-yard proposition. Some day I'll go 
further into the matter with that kid and we'll get a 
story out of it. 

Now, I have had more or less trifling and incon- 
sequential experience in rifle rapid fire, including sev- 
enteen shots in 1^ minutes, scoring 70x85, with the 
armoury sub-target Springfield, and the point I am 
driving at in all this is that while gun pointing with a 
shotgun is excellent as far as it goes, do not stare 
fixedly at the mark and whang away without any aim 
other than your ability to point a gun, but let your 
eye retain general guidance, and do not let off until 
it tells you that your sight is truly on the bird or has 
reached the proper amount of lead. The eye is in- 
stantaneous ; it is the trigger finger and guiding mus- 
cles that take time and training. Wherefore do not 
abandon supervision of your sights when you acquire 
a reasonable proficiency in gun pointing; you will 
gain no time by it, and you will lose the advantage of 
centring your pattern on the small flying mark. 

While you may not get many transverse shots in 
upland shooting, with ducks and snipe such shots are 
frequent, as snipe invariably come to decoy down- 
wind, wheel and pass over the decoys facing the wind. 
Just at this point they usually discover their danger, 
and you get a cross shot at top speed, which is some 
twenty-five yards a second. With ducks, both in pass 
shooting and point shooting, cross shots and overhead 
shots are hard ones, and the speed is anywhere from 
35 to 45 yards a second. For these reasons your 



186 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

nearest stool should not be more than 18 yards from 
the blind as your shot at 300 yards a second will take 
1-15 of a second to reach the nearest decoy and i-i2th 
to reach the farthest, during which time a snipe will 
have flown two yards and a duck nearly three. In 
one-half a second he is out of range, and, training on 
him as he comes across, you will need nearly all of this 
to swing, get your lead and pull the trigger. With 
gun swinging twice as fast as the bird, you will not 
need to lead the snipe over a foot and the duck four 
or five at 25 yards. 

For practice in cross fire arrange your trap just 
inside the woods and shoot the pigeons out into the 
field. The shooter walks about on the alert, and 
when one of the yellow saucers sizzles out, your stunt 
is to come to shoulder, swing along the line of flight, 
pass the bird and let off when you think you have lead 
enough. It is fast work, and you need not be 
ashamed of 50 per cent misses. The trap, as usually 
set, throws the clays at 25 yards a second, but you can 
tighten up the spring to do 35 yards, which is some 
swift duck. Of course you stick to 7^ shot for this 
work, — you are shooting at a 4-inch blue rock saucer, 
not a 22-inch duck. Your general position should be 
about 20 yards from the line of flight and about 
15 from the edge of the woods. The boy lets off 
without warning as you walk about, and I found the 
average kill to be 28 yards from the place where the 
shooter stood when firing to the nearest fragments of 
broken target. Another variation is where a hedge 
divides two fields, and you put the trap in one of theni 
while you flourish around in the other, snapping the 



CLAY BIRD PRACTICE AFIELD 187 

oncomers as they hurtle over the screen. The puller 
is concealed in the hedge at 45 degrees from the line 
of fire, so that by no possible chance can he come 
within gun fire. These shots, coming head on ob- 
liquely at you, are the hardest of all, yet many a time 
you get them in the blinds when a bunch of mallard 
or willet come right on high over the decoys and pass 
overhead. A mallard will usually tower if you shoot 
ahead of him (the classic miss with incoming birds), 
and the willet will set all aback, jump three or four 
feet, and make a swerve before continuing his flight. 
In either case a ready and accurate second barrel is 
what is wanted, and the best training for it is incom- 
ing quartering clay pigeons with the field trap. Make 
up your mind that you are quite likely to miss the 
critter with your first barrel, so be prepared to wheel 
and give him the other as he flies past. 

Brush shooting is the supreme domain of the swift 
and spiteful twenty. Her pattern is as dense at 30 
yards as that of the twelve-gauge at 40, with penetra- 
tion slightly superior, — and you are lucky to get a 
sight of a bird in the brush more than 30 yards from 
your gun. In spite of much advice against a light gun, 
I would say the lighter and shorter the better — some- 
thing between five and six pounds, with 26-inch bar- 
rels. My own specimen weighs 5^ pounds, and I 
have shot fifty shells in a day's shooting with it with- 
out my shoulder ever knowing there was a cartridge 
in the gun. You want speed in the brush ; something 
that you can carry all day without being aware of it, 
and something that will fly to your shoulder with the 
quickness of pointing a cane. As a matter of fact, 



188 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

you are on your bird one-fifth of a second faster with 
the twenty than it is physically possible to swing a 
twelve. With quail, woodcock, jacksnipe and rabbit, 
where the game lies close and the ranges are short, 
the twenty is a pure joy, but I would not recommend 
it for grouse, — at least not in their present state of 
wildness. Most of those that I have had arguments 
with got up at least 15 yards from the gun, and you 
were lucky to pull them down inside of 40 yards. 
What you want for them is a sharp-shooting twelve, 
or a hatful of shot from a ten-bore, which is still thick 
enough to garner him after being combed through 40 
yards of twigs. 

However, to get back to the trap and the twenty, 
drive in three pegs anywhere in a suitable patch of 
woods and screw the trap to them. The pegs should 
be at least three feet long to get enough grip on the 
forest duff to stand the kick of the trap. Drive in a 
semicircle of low bushes, concealing the trap, and then 
let your boy note a similar circle of trees and bushes 
ten yards from the trap. Now let him conceal him- 
self behind a tree with the pull-string taut and you 
walk up on the trap looking for trouble. The instant 
you pass one of the ten-yard trees or bushes he pulls 
the trap ; but your first intimation of something doing 
will be the sudden hjkrrr! of the trap and a small 
yellow-and-black saucer sailing out of those bushes. 
It flits through the trees and behind branches, and, 
believe me, if you don't smash it in the first 25 yards 
you haven't a chance! The 16-yard range is hope- 
less — too big a handicap on the twenty and six more 
yards of trees between you and the trap, but 10 yards 



CLAY BIRD PRACTICE AFIELD 189 

is a fair comparison to the tactics of an old he-wood- 
cock squatting to your pointing dog. It is magnifi- 
cent brush practice, and you will eventually get 60 
to 70 per cent of your clays with practice. 

If you own a trap you will soon realise that the 
saucer holder is the only essential part of it, as far as 
throwing clay pigeons is concerned. By that I mean 
that if you unbolt the saucer holder and bolt it through 
the end of a hickory stick, you have a first-class target 
sling for surprise fire afield. Get a stick of i"xi" 
ash or hickory a yard long, whittle a handle on one 
end and leave a nub. three inches long at the other, 
which you drill for the bolt of the target holder. 
Whittle a springy golf -stick taper on the shank and 
you will then have a sling which will throw clays by 
hand. With it you can work nearly all the stunts 
of the fixed trap, with the addition that the thrower 
can walk out in the country with you, firing a pigeon 
at unexpected times and places and otherwise endeav- 
ouring to get your "goat." A miss entitles him to the 
gun and you to the sling. This trap is known to cata- 
logues as the "ping pong" trap and a second variation 
of it is the spring band trap of which more later in 
our chapter on snap shooting. 

A well-known trap shooter handed out this, as it 
were, knugget of knowledge, one day when we were 
consuming a pipe before the Travers Island Club- 
house fire: "Do you know what I do when I get a 
nervous man afield and he persists in snapping his 
birds?" demanded the Expert. 

"No; I presume you frisk him with playful little 
discharges of dynamite," I ventured mildly. 



190 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

"No, I take his shells away from him/ Then he 
knows he might as well take time to aim, and so he 
gets the habit and gets over being flustered by rising, 
birds." 

Listened good to me, but I did not appreciate it 
until one day we were out at field practice with the 
portable trap, and, for reasons unnecessary to state, 
we still had a couple of dozen whole picked-up targets 
left after the last shell had been fired. Some one 
suggested silent practice. It didn't sound very invit- 
ing, but it was great ! Everybody got out in the field 
with empty shells in his gun, and presently a pigeon 
sizzled by like an express train. Five guns pointed 
into the air and five triggers snapped. 

"Got him sure !" announced two triumphantly. 

"Gee ! I was rotten V carolled a third. "I wasn't 
within a yard of him when I let off. Let's have an- 
other." 

"I wasn't just ready," explained a fourth, "and I 
wobbled all over the lot." 

"I was slower than running molasses," growled 
the fifth man. "I had to swing half a turn to my 
right to get on him at all. Give me a goose egg." 

We set off the whole two dozen, and you would be 
surprised at the number of times you could be sure 
you would have missed, — and why. It was the best 
practice in the world, and we gathered all but three 
of the pigeons, still whole, where they had fallen 
among the goldenrod. And so a busy hour passed 
before dinner time, an hour full of good practice in 
swinging and gun pointing that would otherwise have 
gone profitless. The same pigeons went through the 



CLAY BIRD PRACTICE AFIELD 191 

trap a dozen times before they got down to eight sur- 
vivors. Remember this stunt some time when the 
shells are all gone and you still have some time left 
before pulling up to go home. 



CHAPTER XIII 

SHOTGUN MECHANICS 

About 1630 the original flintlock was developed by 
the gunsmiths of Madrid. I have seen one of these 
originals in the Musee d'Artillerie in Paris, where is 
assembled the largest collection of firearms in the 
world, about 2,500 pieces arranged in five great halls. 
This original lock was named the Miquelet, and it had 
the whole works assembled outside the lock-plate, with 
a safety bolt to keep it from going oft" unawares. To 
this day the Miquelet lock is still to be found flourish- 
ing in the rustic districts back of the Sahara, where 
the devout Mohammedans are still unaware that the 
Moors were run out of Spain some time back ; but the 
rest of the world was not content with the Miquelet 
lock in its original state of dishabille, and so the 
French, with their inborn sense of the eternal fitness 
of things, turned it around and sunk the works of the 
lock into the stock, where they have remained ever 
since. 

This lock was the parent of all the modern shotgun 
locks in use until the Anson & Deely lock was gotten 
out, differing radically from it in that the side plate 
was eliminated entirely and the lock placed under the 
barrel in a slot in the frame. To this day these two 
locks give the types used in our various hammerless 

192 



SHOTGUN MECHANICS 193 

guns. The various hammer-locks in use up to the 
early 90's did not differ materially from the original 
Miquelet. You had a hammer, a mainspring, a sear, 
bridle and sear spring, and the whole thing was as- 
sembled on a side plate. If the mainspring went back- 
wards you had to cut away wood in the tang to ac- 
commodate it. If it went forward, the side plate and 
mainspring was tucked away in the frame under the 
barrels. In any event, it made little difference, as far 
as the lock was concerned, whether the firing appara- 
tus was a flint and powder pan, a nipple and percus- 
sion cap or a pin and the primer of a centre-fire car- 
tridge. 

But when the hammerless idea came to the fore 
and the hammer simply had to go, our gunsmiths 
were at once up against the proposition of how to find 
room for a hammer also inside the side plate, or else 
devise a new lock which could be located under the 
barrels in slots. A few of our makers clung to the 
side plate ; others adopted the so-called Anson & Deely 
lock, the finest of which, as found on certain Eng- 
lish guns, can be picked out by hand from recesses 
under the tubes. 

In addition to the lock problems, the breech-load- 
ing gun has quite a complicated set of stresses to 
counteract in the explosive force of the charge. With 
the muzzle-loader you had a solid breech and thick 
walls to the tubes; there was no other way for the 
explosion to go but out, and there was an end. But 
with the breech-loader your solid breech disappeared, 
and you had two alternatives: either use a sliding 
bolt with locking lugs, as in repeating rifles, or swing 



194 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

the tubes on a hinge and let a standing breech wall 
take the rearward stress of the explosion. All the 
repeating shotguns followed the first course; all the 
doubles went to the hinge, since a down-sliding breech 
was out of the question with a double gun. Now, if 
you have a hinge, the rearward pressure of the car- 
tridge, when exploding, must be equally a forward 
thrust against the hinge, since action and reaction 
are always equal. 

If the pressure of the explosion is six tons to 
the square inch and the area of a twelve-gauge car- 
tridge is half a square inch, it is easy to see that the 
rearward thrust on the breech and the forward thrust 
on the hinge is three tons. This is a heavy stress to be 
exerted in a fraction of a second, and it requires a 
given area of steel to withstand it; the more the bet- 
ter, as far as shooting loose is concerned. For all 
looseness begins with the compression of the steel 
in the hinge, due to the constant battering of the 
thrust of the cartridge in firing. For that reason 
we see several standard makes of shotguns with 
double under-lug, fitted to close firmly against a stop 
in the frame, so as to take some of this forward 
thrust off the hinge itself. Still a further safeguard 
consists in a doll's-head extension rib or a large bolt 
through the rib, usually tapered so as to take up or 
compensate for wear. 

If you have ever handled much steel with ma- 
chine tools, testing machines, etc., you will have ob- 
served how very like cheese or molasses candy mild 
steel is in its action. Pounding batters it so as to 
change its shape; heavy stress squashes it; a sharp 



SHOTGUN MECHANICS 195 

lathe tool turns off a curl that has all the tenacity 
and viscidity of cheese, and a punch will drive out 
a blank just its own size, no matter what the thick- 
ness. Tempered steel is vastly different; when it 
goes it breaks, but such qualities are not what are 
wanted in the shotgun. Toughness and lack of brit- 
tleness are the things we are after. Consequently 
the parts of a shotgun do not wear, they compress 
out of shape from so much pounding, and the loose- 
ness begins, first of all, with the front-and-rear thrust 
of the cartridge itself. Once a particle of looseness 
is obtained we get side play, up-and-down motion 
around the hinge as a centre and the explosion causes 
all the tremors that enter into the action of a shot- 
out, poorly made gun. 

We all remember how that first cheap Belgian of 
our boyhood days went to pieces. With no extension 
rib, with insufficient metal in the hinge, with no extra 
lug to take some of the strain off the hinge, it was 
not a shooting season old before the crack at the 
breech was wide enough to slip a paper into; loose- 
ness began to show up in the locking lug; side play 
appeared and grew until you could shake the tubes 
by hand in their frame, and, if you were wise, you 
got rid of her before she shot herself open in your 
arms. 

There is bound to be enough looseness in the ac- 
tion of the best double gun to let you open and shut 
her with ease, whence opportunity is always at hand 
for up-and-down play and side strains. Barrel bor- 
ing and barrel balance have much to do with the 
tendencies, always violent, for the muzzles to either 



196 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

pry up off the frame, using the hinge as a fulcrum, 
or pry down, exerting* a powerful upward thrust 
against the extension rib and its locking bolt, also 
against any under-lugs that may be provided with 
locking bolts. Without extension rib, while a per- 
fectly made gun with plenty of metal in the hinge may 
stay tight with a single bolt in the under-lug, the 
least freedom permits side play and upward play 
which can only end in the gun shooting loose. Each 
shock makes its infinitesimal inroad on the shape of 
the steel, and, as mild steel has little elasticity, the 
effect is cumulative. As the stresses double when 
they have room to move in and can become kinetic 
as well as static, it follows that a gun, once it starts 
to go, will make rapid progress toward the scrap- 
heap, unless there is a compensating scheme to take 
up wear provided for by the maker. . 

A few minor requirements of a good double gun 
and we are through with the outline of what she 
ought to be mechanically. The safety should be easily 
operated, yet not so light as to come off or jar back 
from shooting or brushing with the hand; it must 
not become inoperative if a little damp salt air gets 
into the gun, making it a trifle rusty; it must go on 
automatically when the gun is opened for any cause 
whatever, and it should block everything when the 
gun is open. The hammers should be capable of be- 
ing snapped on the empty gun without danger of the 
pin snapping off through crystallisation; the ejectors 
should be positive and guided firmly so they cannot 
wabble and get under the rim of the shell; if auto- 
matic, only the one whose shell has been fired should 



g 3 



3- d 

5! 



SHOTGUN MECHANICS 197 

throw out when the gun is opened, for nothing is 
so annoying as to have a good cartridge flung over- 
board from boat or battery, and, finally, when the 
gun is closed the top lever should automatically snap 
itself into place. 

Since the broad principles of repeating arms have 
been covered in the chapter on Rifle Mechanics, we 
can dismiss the repeating shotguns as coming me- 
chanically under the same head, and confine ourselves 
exclusively to what goes on inside your double when 
it is loaded and fired. We have space for five repre- 
sentative American double shotguns, Parker, Lefever, 
Ithaca, Smith and Fox. We have room for a me- 
chanical design of each, showing the action with gun' 
open and hammers cocked. No attempt to draw com- 
parisons between the different makes will be made, 
for each has its strong points, based upon the honest 
opinions of its designers, and each reaches the object 
desired, of a strong, simple, reliable double gun, 
through sometimes diametrically opposite mechanical 
principles. 

Open before me as I write is my boyhood double, 
now used by my own son. It is as tight as the day 
it was made. The hinge has not metal enough, ac- 
cording to modern ideas, but the second lug has a 
big bearing surface and is well fitted, and I suspect 
that it has been bearing the brunt of the cartridge 
thrust all these years. A doll's-head extension has 
gummed any tendency to side-wobble, and a single 
locking bolt, engaging a ledge on the rear under-lug, 
has kept it from getting any up-and-down motion into 
its system. 



198 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

Our first illustration shows the action of the Par- 
ker, beloved of sportsmen for more than one gen- 
eration. The lock is an adaptation of the Anson & 
Deely, or slot type, and the hammers are cocked by 
a cocking hook on the lug which engages a slider in 
the frame, which in its turn cocks the hammers. That 
little pin which you see sticking out of the frame when 
the gun is apart, and which is pressed down by the 
fore end when you put it together, has for its func- 
tion pushing the cocking hook into position to en- 
gage the slider. The mainspring is a coiled spring, 
as are most of the mainsprings in modern actions. 
Not that it really makes any difference in the life 
of the lock. What breaks a spring is continuous use 
up to the capacity of its stretch, as you may know if 
you have ever used springs much in machinery that 
must run all day long. In such a case we try to get 
the spring as long as possible, so as to use but little 
of its possible stretch. In the same way a coiled 
mainspring or a flat, bent mainspring are both made 
of sufficient length so that their total motion is small 
compared with the length of the spring. Of course, 
the gunmakers all guarantee their mainsprings for- 
ever! No matter whether flat or coiled, when one 
does go, it is not wear, but defect in tempering. 
Against the latter it is well-nigh impossible to guard. 
When I was in active mechanical engineering we had 
often thousands of springs to make and temper, and 
though our old toolmaker was a shark at tempering 
— one of the best in the country — even one of his 
springs would occasionally fail. 

To release the Parker hammers there are sears 



SHOTGUN MECHANICS 199 

on each side which engage the triggers, and when 
you move the safety forward it interposes a block of 
steel between the safety toggle and the top of the 
triggers, so that it is impossible to pull them. Open- 
ing the gun shoves this safety block into position so 
that it is locked whenever the gun is not ready to 
fire. 

The hammers have the firing-pin forged in one 
piece with them. This would be an element of break- 
ability from the pins crystallising were it not that 
the shape of the hammer is such as to strike the frame 
on the broad face of the hammer at a point some 
distance below the area of the pin base. The ham- 
mers are rebounding, a hammer stirrup coming in 
contact with the hammer screw, thereby stopping its 
movement. 

In the all-important matter of strength the Parker 
is well provided. While some makers prefer to put 
their greatest strength in the locking of the extension 
rib, on the principle that the farther from the hinge 
the stronger mechanically is the resistance against 
opening by up-and-down stress, there is room for an 
honest difference of opinion here. If the principal 
strength is put in the direction of resisting the di- 
rect forward thrust of the cartridge itself and the 
gun is thus rigid against that, all the secondary 
stresses become of minor importance, as they do not 
get a chance to make themselves felt. So we find 
in the Parker generous metal area in the hinge joint 
itself, backed by a second large resisting area in the 
forward edge of the second lug. This same double 
bearing is also found on the Ithaca. A further re- 



200 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

sistance is contributed by the square shoulder of the 
doll's head extension, but, as I said before, this has 
but little real effect mechanically, owing to its small 
area of metal ; where it is needed is to counteract side 
movement and up-and-down movement. This latter 
function in the Parker is attended to by an under- 
locking bolt engaging a ledge on the rear under-lug. 
This is not as strong mechanically as if it were ap- 
plied at the extension rib at a comparatively greater 
radius, but, as the hinge and lug resisting area is so 
very large compared to other designs, the under lug 
bolt is ample. To compensate for the strain produced 
by the incessant pounding on this lug bolt a bit of 
hard steel is dove-tailed in and held by a small pin 
which can be driven out, permitting a new steel bit 
to be inserted, so that after years of use it is possible 
to make this feature as tight as new by putting in the 
new bit. 

It may be argued that no machine fitting that will 
work mechanically smooth will allow two surfaces, 
like the hinge bearing and the lug bearing, to both 
resist the stress of discharge at once. Blackening 
either one of them will show that both of them can- 
not be in absolute contact at the same time, but any 
testing machine will show you that under stress the 
part first attacked yields infinitesimally until the sec- 
ond part also comes under bearing, taking its half of 
the stress. When same is relieved, its elasticity re- 
turns both parts to normal and the mechanism is free 
to move. This is what happens with the two bearings 
of the Parker under lug when the cartridge is fired. 

To take the piece apart the trigger guard is first 




ACTION OF THE PARKER, 
WITH AUTOMATIC EJECTORS 




ACTION OF THE LEFEVER SHOTGUNS 




ACTION OF THE FOX GUNS 



SHOTGUN MECHANICS 201 

unscrewed, exposing the screw of the under plate, 
when all the works of the lock can be gotten at. 

While the Parker satisfies all the requirements of 
the ideal in its own manner, we now come to a gun, 
equally fine, yet arriving at the same goal through 
an entirely different route. The Lef ever, which forms 
the subject of our next illustration, has a side plate 
lock, a comparatively small hinge bearing, and much 
strength of metal is put in the extension rib. When 
you open the gun the first thing that strikes you is 
the absence of any under lug and under locking bolt. 
There is a small link, leading down to the interior of 
the frame, which, as you will note from an inspec- 
tion of the working drawing, is the combined cocking 
lever and extractor cam. The hammer has no firing 
pin forged integral with it but strikes a pin in the 
breech base. It can therefore be snapped without 
injury. The sear is a long curved device, hung from 
above the hammer and engaging a notch on the ham- 
mer head instead of near the main pivot pin as in 
most guns. The safety blocks the trigger heads ; just 
why it has such a small bearing area that is only 
operative at one single point is not apparent. The 
safety must be fully on or it is inoperative, so one 
must be careful with it and see that no inadvertent 
handbrush moves it slightly to the rear, or it will 
fail to engage. The mainspring is of the flat type, 
which, as we have shown, is quite as durable as the 
coil type; and visible indicators, projecting through 
the side plates of the lock, show when either hammer 
is at cock. 

Turning now to the points of safety, the designers, 



202 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

appreciating the necessity to prevent end play from 
strains caused by direct thrust of the cartridge head, 
have made the main bearing compensating, by put- 
ting a spherical-headed screw in the main hinge pin, 
against which the bottom lug gets its bearing. Even 
granting that the spherical bearing offers more sur- 
face than a cylindrical one of the same radius, this 
would not give metal enough for a durable bearing, 
so we find that shape of the bottom lug such that when 
the gun is closed it bears both against the frame at 
the point F, and, further, has the usual reverse bear- 
ing found on all double lugs that fit snugly into a 
pocket in the frame when the gun is closed. This 
reverse bearing is essential to take care of the back- 
ward thrust of the tubes when the shot leaves the 
barrel. Otherwise it would all come on the tube ends 
where they butt against the standing breech, thus 
introducing crushing strains which would eventually 
open up a crack between the barrel ends and the 
breech, and thus let in motion for end play. You 
will note that the extension rib is of generous size, 
cut to fit the radius of a circle struck with the hinge 
as centre, and fitting into a corresponding recess in 
the frame. This adds considerably to the fore-and- 
aft bearing surface; and, for up-and-down play, a 
notch is cut in the extension into which a rotating bolt 
fits with a taper draw. The action is thus tight, and 
can be kept so by manipulating the bearing screw in 
the hinge. The top lever bolt takes care of itself, 
simply requiring replacing of the bit of steel which 
forms the bolt as it wears and allows the lever to close 
out of line. 



SHOTGUN MECHANICS 203 

Our next illustration shows a gun midway in de- 
sign between the former two. The Ithaca shows a 
fine combination of both principles of gun strength, 
together with a rapid lock of the Anson & Deely type 
which has notably few and strong parts. Beginning 
with the lock, you will note a coiled mainspring im- 
pinging directly upon the toe of the hammer, which 
toe engages a notch in the under lug so that opening 
the gun cocks the hammer at once. A sear holds the 
hammer up until its tail is raised by the trigger heads, 
and this sear is blocked by the safety so that even a 
hard fall could not jar the sear off, which might hap- 
pen if merely the trigger heads were blocked. This 
lock is undoubtedly simple; whether faster than any 
other is open to doubt, as, no matter where the force 
is applied, you have the same direct thrust of the 
spring upon the body of the hammer, forming a sim- 
ple couple with the hammer pivot pin. This hammer 
strikes a pin in the standing breech so that snapping 
it will result in no harm. 

In the matter of strength, the simple lock, set well 
back, enables the designers to get in a second under 
lug, as in the Parker, thus doubling the available 
bearing surface against forward thrust of the car- 
tridge head, and providing a ledge for an under bolt. 
In addition there are two holes for rotary bolts in 
the extension rib. While a locking bolt here is of 
prime importance as securing against up-and-down 
play, the metal remaining after passing both bolts 
through the extension is not enough in some grades 
of this gun while in others it is sufficient to play a 
very considerable role in aiding the resistance against 



204 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

forward strain. However, with the ample surface 
already provided for, this feature may be regarded 
as merely an additional precaution, the principal func- 
tion of the rotary bolt being to resist vertical strain. 
It is claimed that to have all three of these bolts oper- 
ative at the same time would be impossible. Theoret- 
ically, yes; practically, the argument does not take 
account of the flexibility of metal under stress ; as well 
claim that the three bearings of an engine do not all 
operate. Black leading will show that one of them 
must be out of line, yet, when the engine runs, all 
three bearings do their share and any one of them 
without oil will promptly heat up, which, of course it 
would not do if it was not carrying its load. In the 
same way we may have no hesitancy in feeling as- 
sured that the stress of discharge is evenly distributed 
to all three bolts of this gun. 

At the same time, no extension rib bolt is ade- 
quate of itself without ample bearing at the hinge. 
I have seen foreign guns with a small pin neatly fitted 
through the extension rib, yet it can easily be shown 
that, without a proper hinge or under-lug bearing, 
the force of the cartridge would shear this pin like 
a piece of twine. In fact it is a survival of the old 
muzzle-loading custom of running a pin through the 
extension into the wood of the stock to hold the bar- 
rel in place. Such a pin had only the miscellaneous 
outside stresses on the barrel to counteract; it never 
came under the direct rending force of the powder, 
yet we see this pin persist to this day in foreign guns, 
so conservative is the craft of the gunsmith. 

Yet, if this pin is made of proper size, and the 



SHOTGUN MECHANICS 205 

metal back of it of corresponding area, it may well 
take its share of resisting the rending force of the 
powder itself, and this we see exemplified in our next 
gun, the Fox, which Colonel Roosevelt thought so 
highly of. Here the cross bolt is made of large area, 
the second bottom lug is done away with, and the 
bearing hinge and the pin divide the resistance against 
forward thrust of the cartridge head, which is always 
the principal force the action of a double gun has to 
contend with. Side play and vertical play are merely 
secondary effects of the fore-and-aft rending force 
of the explosion, since the walls of the tubes take care 
of its outward thrust. In the Fox the two principles 
of pinning against vertical play at the point furthest 
from the hinge centre, and making the main bearings 
of as generous an area as possible are neatly and 
simply combined. Since its rotary bolt is tapered, as 
with all such bolts, and since it has so large a share 
of the main thrust of the discharge to bear, it follows 
that the component along the taper, tending to force 
the top lever back and open the gun, is considerable. 
For this reason the top lever should work rather 
stiffly and should not be allowed to come loose. 

The locks are simple, of the Anson & Deely 
type, cocked by a pin on the under lug, engaging the 
toe of the hammer. The mainspring is of the coiled 
type, operating on the hammer by a link. When you 
open the gun you lift the toe of the hammers, thrust- 
ing back the main springs at the same time until the 
sears fall into the hammer notches. The hammer has 
the firing pin forged integral with it ; its shape is not 
such that one could feel safe against crystallisation 



206 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

through unlimited snapping. The safety blocks the 
trigger heads and has a trifle more bearing than the 
Le fever. In general the Fox is a clean, simple gun, 
easily gotten at by taking off the under plate, durable 
and fast. 

In the L. C. Smith gun we have another example 
of the designer pinning his faith to the single hinge 
bearing and a large through pin in the extension rib. 
This is made extra long to enable a thick, rather flat 
bolt to enter. Evidently the designer intended it more 
to resist vertical movement than the end thrust of 
the cartridge, for the metal left at the rear of the 
rib is by no means equal to the area of the pin. How- 
ever, this has been taken care of by an ample bear- 
ing for the one under lug. The designer has also 
utilised the extra length, given by the curve of the 
radius struck from centre of hinge through the end 
of the extension rib, to get a ledge on which to rest 
a second bolt, adding to his resources against vertical 
strain. 

So much for strength. The locks are of the side 
plate type with flat mainspring and hammers cocked 
by roller cocking hook. Safety blocks the trigger 
heads. This gun is specially sold in one-trigger, 
though all the other makers can give you one if you 
wish it. After one learns to shoot it, the one-trigger 
gun has the advantage of requiring no shift of the 
trigger finger and no displacement of the holding 
wrist. It is, however, a specialty, and, like the auto- 
matic ejector, a bit of mechanics rather outside the 
limits of this chapter. All makers have one or another 
scheme for an automatic ejector, and, if you are get- 



SHOTGUN MECHANICS 207 

ting THE gun of your lifetime, it will pay to strain 
an extra ten dollars and get it with the automatic 
ejectors, as the speed of reloading is then nearly dou- 
bled, for you have an empty gun the instant you open 
it, and, with a finger clip to hold the extra shells, are 
reloaded almost as soon as the mechanical repeater. 
This review of our five principal American guns 
will show the reader that we are in the hands of 
careful and experienced designers with all of them; 
that those who condemn one whole class of guns, 
such as the under lug, as being mechanically unsound, 
simply have not studied the conditions thoroughly. 
For the main strain of the rending thrust of the 
cartridge, it is simply a matter of calculation of the 
stress and of the metal to withstand it ; where to dis- 
pose of this metal the best is a matter of the judg- 
ment and preferences of the designer. It is a mat- 
ter of distribution and compromise. All kinds of 
talking points are made by salesmen on the different 
features of the designs, yet one's individual prefer- 
ences must be guided more by the subtler points of 
taste, the hang of the gun in your hands, the boring 
and pattern its record shows it can make, minor points 
of ease of handling, etc., than by any broad claims of 
superiority of design. Why do I own a Parker, while 
my assistant editor swears by the Le fever, the crack 
shot of the Field and Stream office has an Ithaca that 
money couldn't pry him loose from, and the head of 
the magazine shoots three different makes of Ameri- 
can guns ? We all have our very definite reasons why, 
— but a close analysis shows them all to be — just 
prejudice, mere prejudice ! 



CHAPTER XIV 

SNAP SHOOTING 

That prince of all American game birds, the 
ruffed grouse, is responsible for the material of this 
chapter. Together with his cousin, the woodcock, and 
his little brother, the bob-white, he is the bird which, 
more than any other, sets all your hard-won trap 
honours at naught and makes you offer vainly a mil- 
lion dollars for some ability to snap shoot. Given a 
skyline or a covey shot at either quail or woodcock, 
and you can draw on him, swing, lead, and get him as 
you would snipe or duck; but how often in a dozen 
chances does Mr. Pa'tridge give you more than a 
fleeting glimpse of his royal self, as he whisks out 
of sight through the brush! 

The Kid and I were recently on a trip into the 
mountains where we put up partridges thirty-two 
times in three days' hunting. Of all these, but six 
were really good pokes, where a fellow, not a snap 
shot, would have some chance for his agate, and of 
these six we made good on three. Some upstate 
hunters, who never shot anything more difficult than 
rabbits in their lives, gave us the grand laugh, but 
we failed to be ashamed — we were no snap shots; 
we had to see him for at least a second to do any dam- 
age. Yet, with long, lean, tall Sutton along, how 

208 



SNAP SHOOTING 209 

different would have been the story! Mr. Grouse 
makes his usual getaway — a burst of wings and a 
flash of feathers, dimly seen through the brush, and 
always where least expected — there is a wiggle of 
Sut's gun, a sharp report as the charge of shot speeds 
in the direction Pat was going when last seen, a dull 
thud in the leaves, and Sut cackles "Dead bird!" 

How does he do it ! He does not know any more 
than you do. He don't know he has a gun in his 
hands, even ! Simultaneously with the sudden rise of 
the bird is an equally sudden smash of the gun, and 
somehow the bird and the shot connect — that's all 
there is to it! It is all done with the quickness of 
light; I've seen Sutton make a double on quail right 
under my nose and both birds were falling through 
the air before my gun had gotten to shoulder. One 
day we tried him out at the traps, and Sut drew a 
squad of professionals. Of course, they made up 
a little quarter-dollar sweepstakes, and, of course, 
they asked Sut to join. As it was his first go at the 
traps, he just chipped in his money to be a good fel- 
low, with no thought of winning. It was a mean, 
blustery day and the birds wild. Sut went out with 
twenty-five straight, and the nearest score to him was 
twenty-two. Can you beat it! I've been four years 
creeping up to twenty-two at the traps, and cannot 
depend on that unless wind conditions are easy. 

I decided some time ago that I had to have snap 
shooting as an essential part of my upland shooting 
education, or else go hungry and gameless. The 
climax to this decision reached me on a day's wood- 
cock shoot this fall, where Sut and I and a friend 



210 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

toured the hills in a car, getting off and working up 
every likely swamp where a rill would flow down be- 
tween two forested mountains, making an area of 
thick brush over rich black ooze. This is ideal ground 
for flight woodcock from Canada, and summer birds 
raised right in the swamp. The very first patch had 
a dozen woodcock in it, and, believe me, that many 
birds can give three sportsmen a world of fun before 
they lie too close for even the dogs to find them. It 
was a regular battle at first, with the bang of guns and 
the shouts of "Mark cock !" sounding through the still, 
frosty air. Sut stood back of me, so as to give me 
all the chance in the world, as I was his guest. One 
after another three cock jumped or flew overhead 
from our friend's position, and I tabbed a barrel at 
each of them without drawing a feather. They were 
too quick and sudden for me — over the top of the 
brush and gone in an instant ! 

"For Pete's sake, Cap," growled the exasperated 
Sutton, "if you aren't going to hit any of those birds 
I'm going to begin to shoot. I could have had all 
three of them easy, and, say — we want some to take 
home !" 

Well, you all know the mortification of missing. 
There is nothing to do but take it in silence. I re- 
called sharp-tailed grouse shooting with Frank Stick 
in Montana, where they rise just outside of poplar 
draws, whisk over the brush and are gone in a flash. 
Here I had not fired a shot, just gaping at them with 
astonishment, while Stick, with one poke of the little 
20-gauge for each bird, had knocked three of them 
cold — his thirty-ninth, fortieth and forty-first con- 



SNAP SHOOTING 211 

secutive chicken without a miss. Snap shooting again 
— the only kind that gets them in thick cover ! While 
this score is unusual, even for sharptailed prairie 
chicken, with quail it is infinitely harder. Mr. Barnes, 
a friend of Warner's and a veteran quail shot, has 
been years trying to score 25 straight, but usually 
drops one at or before his twenty-fourth bird. 

On this woodcock shoot both of the others had 
dogs, but it was my lucky year, and I put up twice 
as much game alone as either of them with their dogs. 
And three times that day I got a nice skyline shot 
at a cock and killed him stone dead. But this could 
not heal the wounds of numerous snap shot misses. 
Finally, a recent mountain trip for grouse developed 
such a tremendous proportion of pure snap shots to 
open ones, where you could really see the bird for 
a time, that, while we banged away, we just had no 
chance at all. 

While snap shots are often born, I am convinced 
that they can also be made, and I decided to train 
myself and the Kid in the art, retaining all the pro- 
ficiency for swinging and leading that we already 
had. And the implement to learn on would be un- 
doubtedly the clay-pigeon hand-trap. While, as ordi- 
narily handled, the trap man being alongside of or 
behind the shooter, the hand-trap is a comparatively 
easy proposition, when you put him at a distance from 
you and let him shoot the clay birds at an angle with 
the brush it becomes a great deal harder and re- 
quires a lightning-quick snap shot. We decided to 
take our guns, a bag of blue rocks and the hand-trap 
out into brush country — Hog Swamp and Brier 



212 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

Swamp both presented themselves as lovely candi- 
dates for schoolroom honours! We chose the latter 
as nearer ; also it had some comparatively open spaces, 
with just trees and low underbrush to begin on, for 
there is no use crabbing the whole game by making 
it too hard at the start. 

Here we hied us for Lesson I. The idea was for 
each in turn to prowl around with his gun looking 
for trouble, while the other, about twenty-five feet 
away in the brush, would spring the trap without 
warning. No aim or follow through was to be taken, 
just poke the gun at the flying clay and fire. That 
was just it — aiming at the bird, which proved to be 
our undoing! You do not want to aim at him, any 
more than you would throw a stone at him — poke 
in ahead somewhere so that your bird will fly into 
your charge of shot. The tendency to aim at the 
bird and follow through, swinging ahead, was almost 
irresistible, we found, and it accounted for most of 
our misses with snap shots at birds in thick cover. 
There is no use aiming at the bird, for he will not 
be there when the shot gets out to him ; nor can you 
swing ahead on him, for there is no time. Through 
brush, behind trees and crash into some branch the 
pigeon goes, and it's all over in less than a second. If 
you do not pick him out with a swift snap it's all off. 
We thought that twenty-five cartridges would be 
enough for the first afternoon's practice. It wasn't 
enough by three boxes ! All were gone in, it seemed, 
ten minutes, though we were actually shooting for 
nearly an hour on our first lesson, and consumed two 
hours at the business, first and last. 




HARD SNAP SHOOTING 

At this angle and distance of 30 feet to the trap boy it is nearly 
impossible to hit them. 




THE SNAP-SHOOTING SCHOOL 

DoubTe 12 gauge Parker and the 
Dupont hand trap. 



EASY SHOOTING WITH CLEAR SKYLINE 

Hand trap alongside or behind is 
easy at all angles. 



SNAP SHOOTING 213 

And how the hand-trap did show us up for a 
couple of rank boobs! I, that was good for 22 at 
the regular trap game, and had always done well with 
snipe and wildfowl, — well, I hit just three out of 
fourteen shots! The Kid, who did seven out of fif- 
teen with his twenty-eight at the regular trap stand 
and always beats me in beach shooting, more espe- 
cially since he has graduated to the 12-gauge double, 
— he got just one bird, and that on the second shot 
of a double. For, of course, we used both barrels. 
It is part of what this hand trap training is for, to 
remind you that you have another barrel and to use 
it, often forgotten in the infrequent chances of actual 
bird shooting. 

And these were not really hard brush shots, either. 
They were the easiest we could devise. The hand 
trap man was abreast of you, only about twenty-five 
feet away, and you knew just where the bird would 
come from and where he would go. But, unlike the 
hand trap work at the Camp Fire Club, where the 
birds are thrown against a skyline and you have time 
to pick him up and swing, this work was all pure snap 
shooting. The bird whizzed past, low over the brush 
between the trees, and you just chucked it to him. 
We couldn't understand our continuous misses. 
"Why, I was sure I had that one, Pop !" would come 
the Kid's chagrined cry;- — and my own observations 
on my shooting are best left out of print entirely! 

The first box of shells went all too quickly, and 
we would have given two prices for another box or 
so. Eked out with some extras from our last hunt- 
ing trip, we had fourteen shots apiece, usually two 



214 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

to each bird, as we missed with either one or both bar- 
rels. Gee, but we did get shown up! To watch us 
one would think that neither of us had ever had a gun 
in our hands before. The birds flew mostly left quar- 
tering across our faces, at about 70 degrees angle 
or 30 degrees off straightaway; the shot load was 
yy 2 chilled, and we were using the 65 per cent choke 
right barrels, with the full choke for follow shot. The 
pieces of the birds hit were picked up at 35 yards from 
the traps, showing very slow shooting, and they did 
not appear to be thrown from the trap nearly as fast 
as quail or grouse make their getaway. 

Out of the welter of misses, two facts seemed to 
stand out clearly ; we were not pointing the guns where 
we thought we were, and we were still shooting at 
the bird instead of keeping cool and using some judg- 
ment to drive in our shot somewhere ahead of the 
clay in the direction he was going when the gun got 
on him. More than anything else, we could not clearly 
explain just what we were doing when the bird shot 
through the brush ; we just saw him, pointed the gun, 
and fired. Now this is all very well for a natural- 
born snap shot, like Sutton, but we were learning 
by hard practice and close analysis of each move. 

Point One, whether we were really pointing the 
gun where we looked, we decided to test out on the 
next lesson with a stationary target. Suppose you 
hang the pigeon in a bush thirty yards away, load and 
cock your gun wilfh your back to it, whirl and fire — 
how near would you come to hitting it without any 
conscious aim? If the gun fitted you, you ought to 
smear it every time, with a bit of practice, as the pat- 



SNAP SHOOTING 215 

tern is 30 inches diameter, equivalent to hitting a 
thirty-inch bull's-eye with a rifle at thirty yards, cer- 
tainly no hard feat for a rifle snap. But if you swung 
fast and shot when the bird was in line you would 
not hit it, as the swing would throw the shot way 
to one side. The trigger must be pulled before you 
reach the bird, about two feet before, as no one can 
stop a gun absolutely in mid-swing. In order to show 
just how far off true centre we were getting we de- 
cided to use a special shotgun target made by the Shot- 
gun Pattern Target Co., of Milwaukee, Wis., and 
to be had in any large gun store ( forgive this ad. but 
they are the only people making such a thing). This 
target has a black silhouette of a clay bird in the cen- 
tre, a 10-inch, 20-inch and 30-inch black ring sur- 
rounding it, and is quartered by horizontal and verti- 
cal black lines. It tells you the kind of pattern of your 
gun at all distances, what distribution of its pattern 
it makes, whether it shoots true to aim with both bar- 
rels, and how many pellets it will put in a flying clay 
pigeon at various distances. Printed along one side 
of the target is a table of pellets for various chokes, 
from 75 per cent to cylinder and for 6, 7, 7^> and 8 
shot in all these chokes, a handy reference table sav- 
ing a lot of figuring, and there is a record blank 
printed on the target to make your scores permanent 
and of value to you in the great game of Knowing 
Your Gun. A dozen of these patterns is none too 
many for each gun, as you cannot judge except by the 
average performance of at least ten shots. None of 
these should be very bad, and the nearer uniform they 
run the better. 



216 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

The next Saturday found us giving the rabbits 
the go-by and on our grounds with a box of shells, 
a dozen targets, two dozen clay birds and the hand 
trap. Often we had vowed that a million dollars 
would be cheap to pay for Sutton's ability as a snap 
shot ; now we were going to see if a $25 ammunition 
bill and the giving up of part of the hunting season 
to a course in snap shooting wouldn't more than re- 
pay us. Our very first experiment showed us a fact, 
often brought out in print, but not realised sufficiently 
to take strict account of in practice — field guns are 
sighted to place the charge about eight inches high 
at 40 yards, so that you can see your bird over the 
barrels, and should be careful not to cover him too 
close or you will overshoot. A careful rifle sight at 
the paper silhouette, at thirty yards with the medium 
choke barrel, showed the centre of the pattern 7 inches 
high above the silhouette, which, nevertheless, had 
eight pellets in it. The diameter of the pattern proved 
at this range to be 26 inches, and a raise of 4 more 
inches would have brought only one pellet in the bird, 
though up to that point it would have gotten six or 
seven, anyhow. Rule I. — Always see your bird well 
above the barrels before you tab ofT. 

Experiment No. 2 — Can you hit a stationary clay 
pigeon, turning your back on him, at 30 yards, whirl- 
ing and firing with a snap poke? Answer, you can- 
not any more than with a flying bird. Time and 
again we whirled about, swinging the gun on the clay 
with no halt, only to find a clean miss; sometimes a 
hit, but not often, nor with any certainty. This was 
undoubtedly due to the swing of the barrels carrying 



SNAP SHOOTING 217 

the shot beyond the bird and the cure was to let off 
before you saw him come over the barrels. But, if 
you halted ever so little, so as to get a fleeting glimpse 
of the bird over your sight as you pressed trigger, 
the result would be a pulverised bird in a wad of 
pellets. Rule II. — Don't press trigger until you really 
see the bird coming over the barrels, not in the general 
neighbourhood of him. This rule is more important 
than it seems, at least to me, for I have found the 
same thing in all my trap shooting and wild- fowl 
shooting, you have to see the bird, properly placed 
over or behind your barrels, and know that he is so, 
if you expect to score a hit. But there is no time to 
do this in snap shooting as a rule, — your first at- 
tempts will be wild pokes with no very clear recollec- 
tion of just where the bird was in relation to your 
barrels, except that he seemed to you to be just what 
you were pointing at. 

In a word, I do not believe that mere gun point- 
ing is enough. Fifteen inches out of true in forty 
yards means a clean miss — can you point at anything 
that far away and point it as closely as within fifteen* 
inches? Our snaps at stationary marks would seem 
to say: No, — decidedly not, — you must get that in- 
stant when you know the bird is just coming over 
your sights. 

Shall we, then, find our bird, follow through and 
swing for lead, as with sky-line work, only do it 
quicker ? I do not think so. Our next attempts with 
the hand trap demonstrated that you have no time 
for anything like that. It takes an appreciable time 
to find where the bird is and where he is going; an- 



218 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

other instant to point the gun at him, — and then he 
is gone ! 

When you hit, — glorious feeling! — an analysis 
told you that the bird was invariably flying into your 
line of fire, only it was so hard to remember not to 
aim at him ! And when you missed, it was invariably 
with the surprised exclamation, "Why, I simply 
couldn't have missed that one — I was right on him." 
Doubtless true, and also doubtless the very cause 
of the miss! But we were creeping up. The Kid 
started off with a fine smash, then a miss, a hit, two 
misses, a hit, a miss, a hit, another hit, a miss, a hit, 
two misses; — 6x13, or nearly 50 per cent; better than 
the average brush shooting, but then these were all 
easy birds, and you knew too much about where they 
would rise and about where they would go. Some of 
the misses were explainable, some rabid mysteries; 
three of the hits were clean smashes, showing a well- 
centred pattern, three of them had but one pellet 
in the pigeon when picked up, and a wabble was our 
only clue to a hit. My own score for Lesson 2 was : 
two misses, two hits, two misses, a hit, a miss, a hit, 
a miss, two hits, a miss, a hit; — 7x14, or 50 per cent. 
Four of the hits were elegant smashes; three, one or 
two pellets. Out of the lesson you got two facts; 
you hit when you picked up the bird smartly and ac- 
curately and knew that he was whizzing into your line 
of fire while you swung. You missed if you poked 
blindly at him, with no sure sight of him over the 
barrels; or if you planted the gun on him and pulled; 
also if you forgot to hold under him. In this lesson 
we dispensed with the second barrel. It was a 



SNAP SHOOTING 219 

temptation to waste shells, for you would use it on a 
far chance, just as you would on game, and there 
was no need, because it would be almost certainly a 
miss. Later, when we got so we could pick them out 
with some degree of proficiency, we could bring in 
the second barrel to make good on the misses. 

I foresaw almost as long a road ahead with snap- 
shooting as with trap shooting. I suppose I have ex- 
pended about fifteen hundred shells in getting to my 
present mild attainments in the latter game; with all 
that practice behind me and the Kid with virtually 
none at the regular game, we still stood 50-50 in snap- 
shooting. He has fired perhaps two hundred shots at 
game, and maybe two hundred more with the 28 in 
skyline practice with the standard and hand traps, 
but this brush game is new to him. 

Experiment No. 3 we blundered into, and the illus- 
tration exemplifies it. You will note my partner in 
crime hurling a clay with the hand trap, at an acute 
angle across my face. He is standing at just the dis- 
tance from the camera that I stood with the gun, 
about thirty feet. At this distance and angle we both 
missed ten straight, and so got into a slough of de- 
spond that nearly finished me for the scattergun for 
good. I honestly felt that I had more chance at 'em 
with the grooved bore, and, as far as results go, I had. 
The question "What is the matter with us?" grew 
more insistent with every shot. A field analysis said 
that we simply had no time to pick up the bird and 
swing for him; long before you could find him and 
swing he was gone for good. A real snap shot would 
be somewhere in ahead of his line of fire with no 



220 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

swing at all, but this worked out a clean 'miss every 
time. 

Then I tumbled; we were trying too great a step 
ahead, without any intermediate step, in other words 
the trap artist was too far away from the shooter. 
Calling the Kid over to about ten feet from me, he 
sent them away at all angles — and I broke eight 
straight ! Why ? Because you were now enough be- 
hind each bird to swing along his angle without too 
much gun motion, and had more time to find the 
bird. On his turns the Kid did about half-and-half 
with the same scheme, that is, with me firing the trap 
not over ten feet away from him. In fact, it was 
almost as easy as the regular hand-trap game, where 
the trap man stands behind or alongside you, as shown 
in our third illustration, and fires them away from 
you at various angles, usually with open skyline, as 
shown. 

But this was not what we were after ; we wanted 
the ability to hit crossing snaps, and we had found 
out the way to do it, for, by progressively moving far- 
ther and farther away from the gun, the shots got 
harder and harder, and the misses climbed up again. 
But we had the right scheme; all you had to do was 
to keep at the limit distance until it got easy and then 
move the trap farther away. 

This consumed a whole morning of practice, and 
our next step was to introduce the standard trap, 
screwing it down on top of an old tree stump, with 
spring led back into the bush. The one who set the 
trap also changed the angle, so that, while you knew 
where the bird would rise, you did not know which 



SNAP SHOOTING 221 

way he would go. At that, it was not as hard as cross 
fire, because you were behind the bird, and so he went 
away from you, at an angle. 

The reader may not imagine that this chapter is 
to end with a triumphant record of the production of 
two finished snap shots, with long strings of clean 
kills behind them. That takes time and practice — 
lots of it. What we have devised is an inexpensive 
working system to teach snap shooting; something 
that any one with a hand trap can follow out. It is 
a good winter sport, and really necessary for the, 
majority of us — for, as I am firmly convinced, while 
a few snap-shots are born, the majority of them can 
be or have been made. 



CHAPTER XV 
/ 

CARTRIDGES AND TABIDS 

It cannot be too forcibly impressed on the rifleman 
that the cartridge, not the rifle, is his main considera- 
tion in selecting the arm for the kind of shooting he 
expects to get. Most popular big game rifle cartridges 
were designed for certain services, and the rifles were 
made by the various manufacturers to handle these 
cartridges, not the cartridges to fit the rifles. 

Our chapter on rifle mechanics should give the 
student some idea of how the various problems were 
met in iron and steel by the designers; we will now 
look over the trajectory tables of the cartridges to get 
some well-defined ideas on what the latter are intended 
to be used for. 

During the '80s and '90s big game was plentiful, 
and in the Rockies the grizzly bear was still lord of 
brute creation and prone to charge and attack man. 
The Indian was still hostile and to be reckoned with, 
and so we find the cartridges of that day to tend to- 
wards stubbiness, so that plenty of them could be put in 
the tubular magazines ; heaviness of bullet was needed 
to give the greatest pounding power; both of these 
qualities being at the expense of accuracy and range. 
Of these cartridges the ideal for deer was the .38-55- 
225, that is .38 calibre, 55 grains of powder, and a 225- 

222 



CARTRIDGES AND TABLES 223 

grain bullet. Its trajectory, in brief its mid-range 
height of bullet, was 2% inches for 100 yards, 13.56 
for 200 yards, and 34^2 inches for 300 yards. This 
means that when sighting at a mark 100 yards away 
your bullet would rise 2% inches at 50 yards, so that if 
he was really only 50 yards away your bullet would 
strike nearly 3 inches high if you held dead on him. 
As the ranges at which deer are shot in the woods 
vary from 50 to 100 yards, this doesn't make much 
difference, and to this day the .38-55 is a popular deer 
cartridge because its 225-grain bullet is a smasher and 
a deer can carry away more lead, for his size, than 
any of the hoofed animals. Right now lots of .38-55S 
are made and sold, the '86 model Winchester, '93 
Marlin and '99 Savage handling it, as well as most 
of the single shot rifles. 

But at 200 yards this rise of the bullet was a seri- 
ous matter, for any error in calculating distance would 
cause you to overshoot or undershoot. As the bullet 
rose 13^/2 inches at 100 yards when held dead on the 
200 yard target (with sights of course set for that 
distance), if the deer happened to be in reality only 
a hundred yards off you would overshoot him 13^4 
inches. It was thus very easy to miss at ranges well 
within the holding power of even a moderately good 
shot, and at 300 yards, with nearly a yard of mid- 
range height, you had no chance at all to connect, for 
who can judge 300 yards correctly in deer country? 

For moose and elk the .45-70-500 was a cartridge 
in the same class and having the same trajectory, and 
it brought down these animals to stay, at short ranges 
around 100 yards, and for grizzly, after a number 



224 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

of hunters had been mauled and killed by bears with 
several mortal .45 calibre wounds in them, the .50- 
1 10-300 Express was gotten out, with a comparatively 
light bullet of large calibre that would mushroom in- 
side the bear and tear him up so as to knock him down 
to stay. This cartridge, like the others, had about 
the same trajectories for the same ranges. In ac- 
curacy they were rather poor. Lieut. Whelen, U.S.A., 
puts the .45-70 and .50-110 in class D, grouping 3^2 
inches at 100 yards, and 12 inches at 200 yards, and 
the .38-55 he puts in class C, 3-inch group at 100 
yards and 8-inch at 200. This means that, if per- 
fectly held, the bullets will vary inside a 3-inch circle 
at 100 yards (which is as close as any hunter can hold, 
and plenty close enough for practical shooting) and 
vary inside an 8-inch circle at 200 yards, which is 
not close enough for good long-range shooting. 
Whelen's tests were made with many hundreds of 
rounds, with all classes of rifles, and have never 
been questioned. The muzzle velocity of all these 
short cartridges was around 13 to 16 hundred feet 
per second, and their striking energy equal to those 
of any rifle to-day, in fact for woods shooting they 
are still favourites. 

Later they were all loaded with high grade smoke- 
less powders, up to the limit of accuracy that the bullet 
would stand. This flattened their trajectories about 
20%, and increased their striking energy 25%, and 
all these cartridges to-day are sold both as originally 
designed and as "H. V." (high velocity), and this 
represents the maximum perfection that they can at- 
tain, for if you attempt to drive these stubby bullets 



CARTRIDGES AND TABLES 225 

at any higher velocity their accuracy goes to the winds. 
The smallest of them all, the .32-20-115, originally 
designed as a woodchuck and fox rifle, was turned into 
a passable deer rifle by the H. V. loading, a trifle light 
perhaps, but good as the old .32-40 black powder, and 
better than the Kentucky pea rifle with which thou- 
sands of deer were killed in our pioneer days. The 
advantages of the .32-20 in handling three powers of 
cartridge in the same rifle have been sufficiently 
brought out earlier in this work. 

The need for greater accuracy at longer ranges 
led to the bringing out of longer cartridges, with more 
powder and a longer bullet to spin serenely under 
higher velocities, thus keeping the striking power the 
same yet flattening the trajectory and increasing the 
accuracy. Such cartridges were the .32-40-165, the 
ideal for deer, and the .40-72 for mountain sheep and 
goat (mostly shot, even then, at ranges of 100 to 200 
yards) and the .45-90-300 for moose, elk and bear. 
These all had about 2^4 inches trajectory for 100 
yards, 10 inches for 200 yards, and 30 for 300 yards. 
The H. V. loading improved these trajectories about 
30%, and gave them all striking power equal to the 
[best military designs of to-day, so that you will find 
[lots of moose brought down with the .45-90-300 H. V. 
to-day, as its muzzle energy is 2,644 foot lbs., making 
it plenty powerful enough for all the largest big game. 

Then came the modern military cartridge, in which 
by necking down the shell we were able to get a big 
charge of powder behind a long, slender bullet, and 
this was driven at very high velocities, getting about 
the same striking energy in spite of its small bullet, 



226 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

and maintaining a low trajectory and high velocity 
at long ranges, so that 300 yards was easy shooting 
and men began to hit bull's-eyes at 500 and 1,000 yards 
with ease. All this was noted by the big game hunt- 
ers with enthusiasm, and so the modern hunting car- 
tridges came into use, and the rifles to handle them 
were designed by the various arms companies. The 
.30-30-170 displaced the .38-55-225 because its trajec- 
tories were 1.58, 5.79 and 15.23 inches for 100, 200 
and 300 yards, about half the heights for the older 
rifle, thus decreasing materially the tendency to miss 
by overshooting; the .30-40-165 drove out the .45-70- 
500 for moose and elk, and the .35 and .405 drove out 
the. 45-90 and. 50- 1 10-300. These changes seemed made 
to stay, as the cartridges of the later rifles were much 
lighter, their trajectories much flatter and in general 
they seemed about ideal for the purpose intended. 

Then came the automatic rifles, in which a number 
of rapid knock-down shots were wanted quick at short 
range, and so a whole series of rimless stubby car- 
tridges, with rather long heavy bullets and plenty of 
steam in the shape of dense powders, was gotten out 
to work in the various automatic rifles. Such were 
the .35 Remington, the .351 and .401 Winchester, the 
.380 Colt, etc. They all lacked accuracy at long 
ranges, but for the purposes intended were very good. 
The trajectories were flat, 1.01, 6.47 and 17.06 inches 
for the Winchester .401-250 being typical of the class. 
All except the Remington landed in Whelen's Class 
D, the Rem. getting into Class C, or 3 inches group 
at 100 yards. 

The coming of the U. S. Army Springfield, par- 



CARTRIDGES AND TABLES 227 

ticularly its '06 cartridge, marked a new advance in 
rifle cartridges, based on high velocity. The energy 
of the bullet varies as the square of the velocity, hence 
even a small increase of velocity will bring up the 
energy greatly. Copper jacketing the bullet to hold 
it together enabled the enormous muzzle velocities of 
2,700 to 3,000 feet per second and gave us a whole 
new class of cartridges, such as the Gov't '06, the Ross 
.280, the Savage .22 and .250 Hi-power, and the vari- 
ous Newton cartridges. The trajectories of the '06 
are typical of the lot, .68 inch for 100 yards, 2.95 for 
200 yards, and 7.50 for 300 yards — no chance to 
miss through overshooting here, at any range for big 
game hunting ! These would seem to be the ideal all- 
around rifles, good equally at short or long range, 
powerful enough for everything from deer to Alaskan 
bear. These rifles are much in use to-day, and the 
Winchester Model '95 takes the Gov't '06 cartridge, 
so we can use it in a regular hunting rifle. 

However there are flies in the ointment, as usual. 
The bullets of these cartridges are light, and are driven 
at such terrific velocities that they often do very er- 
ratic stunts, and if they hit a twig are apt to explode 
or be materially deflected, while the slower bullets 
merely cut the twig and go on undisturbed. And when 
the bullet reaches the animal it disintegrates and tears 
and lacerates tissue to a great extent. The meat 
around the wound is then full of fine copper fragments 
and must be thrown away, which is a serious matter 
in as small an animal as a deer. If it strikes big bones, 
as in a moose, it may go all to pieces and do no par- 
ticular harm as far as knocking the animal down 



228 RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 

goes. He will surely die of such a wound, but you 
may never get him, even after tracking him for miles. 
These facts, which are beyond dispute, occur again 
and again under my experience for many years as edi- 
tor of Field & Stream, and, while they do not alter 
the further facts that many and many an animal has 
gone down never to rise again from a bullet from 
one of the extra high velocity rifles, they have led 
many hunters to stick to the somewhat earlier rifles, 
combining comparatively high velocity with heavy 
bullets and big shocking power — and that is where the 
controversy rests at this writing. Many of the more 
experienced hunters are returning to the lever rifle 
with its greater quickness of fire and its heavier bul- 
lets, having been through several seasons of experi- 
ence with the high velocity bolt actions; others are 
more than ever convinced that the latter are the best 
advance that has yet been made. And the .250-3000- 
115 Savage is both a lever action and a high velocity 
gun, and withal a light, quick handling rifle, of light 
ammunition, a mighty nice little gun. Personally I 
cannot aim with it with any great success, as the barrel 
is too light to hold properly. In selecting your rifle, 
then, a number of elements must be considered; your 
personal build and temperament; the game you ex- 
pect to go after for the most part; the country you 
expect to shoot in, whether open mountains or wooded 
ridges ; whether you expect to use a supplemental for 
small game or no ; and how many rounds you are likely 
to need in the entire time of your hunt. A study 
of the following tables will give you much material 
to aid in determining your selection. 



CARTRIDGES AND TABLES 



229 



POWDER CHARGES 



Powder 

Charge Grs. 

(Weight) 



Name of Powder 



Name of Cartridge 



7 to 8 



16 to 17 

16 to 17 
14 



22 
23 



25 
23 

9 
23 

24 

24 
25 

33 

15 to 16 

27 to 29 

35 
24 to 25 



Sharpshooter. 



Lightning. . . 

Lightning. . . 
Sharpshooter 
Lightning. . . 

Lightning. . . 

Lightning . . . 
Lightning. . . 

Lightning . . . 

Lightning . . . 

Lightning. . . 
Sharpshooter 
Lightning. . . 

Lightning. . . 

Lightning . . . 
Lightning. . . 
Lightning. . . 
Sharpshooter 

Lightning. . . 

Lightning. . . 

Lightning. . . 



25-20 Single Shot 
25-20 Repeater 
25-21 
25-25 

25-35 Win. 
25-35 Savage 
25-36 Marlin 
25-35 Rem. Atito. 
28-30 Stevens 

7 m/m Mauser 

130-30 Win. 
30-30 Mar. 
30-30 Sav. 
30-30 Rem. Auto. 
303 Savage 
f 30-40 U. S. "Krag" 
\ 30-40 Win. 189s 

[ 30-40 U. S. "Krag" 
\ 30-40 Win. 1895 

/ 30 U. S. 1903 & 1906 
\ 30-45 U. S. Win. 1895 

303 British 

32-20 

32-40 
/ 32 Win. Spl. 
\ 32 Mar. H. P. S. 

8 m/m 

32 Rem. Auto. 

33 Win. 1895 
351 Win. S. L. 

[35 Rem. Auto. 
\ 9 m/m Rifle 
35 Win. 1895 
J 35-55 
I 38-72 



230 



RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 



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CARTRIDGES AND TABLES 



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232 



RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS 



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CARTRIDGES AND TABLES 



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